Is the concept of God in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) the same as the God of Christianity (New Testament) or the Allah of Islam (Quran)? What similarities and differences do you notice?
MLA style (Critical Thinking Essay) 2-4 pages
Additional Scholarly Journal can be used.
ARTICLES
let On the
Symbolic Stractmire of
Martin S. Jaffee
The article explores some of the symbolic foundations of the monothe-
istic discourses that underlie Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The focus
of such discourses on the uniqueness of the Creator of the world and the
exclusivity of his modes of communication with especially selected indi-
viduals and communities fosters within each tradition an abiding capac-
ity for intercommunal rivalry and conflict. In this view, competition and
conflict among monotheistic traditions is not a failure of monotheistic
ethics but an expression of the fundamental intentionality of monothe-
istic discourses as symbolic systems.
The article opens with some criticisms of commonly cited encyclo-
pedic treatments of monotheism and distinguishes between “metaphysi-
cal” or speculative monotheism and “elective” monotheism. The bulk of
the discussion probes the general symbolic structures that underlie con-
crete historical discourses of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
AND OFF, for roughly fifteen years now, I have offered a mass-
enrollment “service course” officially entitled “Introduction to Western
Martin S Jaffee is Professor of Comparative Religion and Professor of Jewish Studies at the Uni-
versity of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion December 2001, Vol. 69, No. 4, pp 753-775
© 2001 The American Academy of Religion
754 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Religions.”1 I have long ago made my peace with informing my students
on the first day of class that, despite the title of the course for which they
enrolled, there are really no such things as “western religions” and there
never have been. It has taken me somewhat longer to wonder, if only to
myself, whether the “monotheism” commonly taken to define the struc-
ture of “western religions” is a similarly vacuous comparative concept.
Surely there are other, more salient ways of dividing the turf of religion
than counting divinities?
Nevertheless, there is, I believe, a reason to retain the idea of “mono-
theism.” The reason is that attention to what I below identify as the “sym-
bolic structure of elective monotheism” does, in my view, yield a certain
kind of insight into the genesis and logic of religious violence. I argue
neither that only monotheism engenders such violence nor that mono-
theists are uniquely prone to religious violence but only that a certain type
of monotheism provides a remarkably fertile symbolic universe for legiti-
mating violence when other historical and cultural factors are also at
work.2
MONOTHEISM AND THE FETISH OF UNIQUENESS
A useful way to gain a sense of the history of an academic question is
to survey its treatment in a range of encyclopedia entries over a series of
decades. This is precisely what I did while trying to organize my own re-
flections on monotheism as a descriptive and comparative problem for
the historian of religion. My reading ranged from Robert Flint’s magiste-
rial survey of theism in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
of 1902 to Theodore Ludwig’s 1987 synthesis of a century’s scholarship
on monotheism in the Encyclopedia of Religion.31 was amazed at the de-
1 The present article had its genesis in the undergraduate classroom I have heretofore presented
elements of this discussion in two undergraduate textbooks, Jaffee: 93-96 and Corngan et al. 77-
81. An earlier version of this essay was presented at a conference entitled “How to Compare Reli-
gions,” held in January 2000 at the Ruprecht-Karl-University in Heidelberg, Germany The con-
ference was sponsored by the Jacob Taubes Minerva Center for Religious Anthropology at Bar-Ilan
University I owe thanks to Professor Albert Baumgarten of Bar-Ilan for convening that confer-
ence and to the participants for their helpful responses.
2 Perhaps the most penetrating recent reflection on the cultural dynamics of monotheism is avail-
able in Assmann, who describes what I term elective monotheism as a “counter-religion” that “re-
jects and repudiates everything that went before and what is outside itself as ‘paganism.’ It no longer
functioned as a means of intercultural translation, on the contrary, it functioned as a means of
intercultural estrangement Whereas polytheism, or rather ‘cosmotheism,’ rendered different cul-
tures mutually transparent and compatible, the new counter-religion blocked intercultural trans-
latabihty. False gods cannot be translated” (3).
3 Flint’s discussion of theism appears in Encyclopaedia Bntanmca, vol 23 (1902) Ludwig’s dis-
cussion of monotheism appears in the Encyclopedia of Religion, vol 10.
Jaffee- One God, One Revelation, One People 755
gree to which the questions and issues addressed by Flint at the dawn of
the century continue to define the agenda staked out by Ludwig toward
its dusk. Opinions on many matters have surely been refined, and new
monographic results have been incorporated into the discussions over the
course of time. But, in substance, the articles I read inhabit a strikingly
similar conceptual universe.4
The same themes appear time and again: the opposing of monothe-
ism and polytheism as two ends of a typological continuum that includes,
among other ways of conceiving divinity, “henotheism,” “monolatry,”
“dualism,” “monism,” “pantheism,” and so forth; the question of whether
monotheism originated early in the historical evolution of religious ideas
or toward the end of that history; and, in a related matter, the drawing of
distinctions within monotheism itself. But, most prevalent of all, hover-
ing behind virtually all discussions as an assumed, circumambient discur-
sive atmosphere, is the confidence that monotheism’s own theomorphic
formulations are a sufficient foundation for sketching its phenomenologi-
cal outlines as a historical pattern of religion. Virtually every author I
consulted seemed satisfied to identify as the primary taxonomic marker
of monotheism an insistence on the numerical oneness and qualitative
uniqueness of the divine Being whose activity accounts for the creation
of the world and in relation to whom human beings discover and fulfill
the purpose of their own creation.
There is, of course, nothing essentially “wrong” with this assumption
as far as it goes. As a technical term, monotheism is designed precisely to
suggest that in the history of religions there are some crucial differences
among religious worldviews—namely, that a world grounded in a sense
of the plurality and multilocal presence of the sacred differs radically from
one in which a unified embodiment of all sacrality transcends the world.5
Certainly, monotheists and monotheism have been crucially concerned
with the unique God of creation who loves his creatures and expects them
to conform to his plan for them as expressed in his will.6 What troubles
* I generalize here based on the following major encyclopedic treatments: Encyclopaedia of Reli-
gion and Ethics, vol. 8, s.v. “monotheism”; Encyclopaedia Bntannica, vol. 23, s.v. “religion”; New
Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 9, s.v. “monotheism, primitive”; and Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 12, s.v.
“monotheism.”
5 The on-line edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “monotheism,” records a usage in
counterpoint to “polytheism” as early as 1660. Max Weber’s 1922 discussion of the socioeconomic
and political foundations of polytheism and monotheism, and the corresponding distinctions in
worldview, has been very influential here. See Weber 1963: 20-25.
6 The masculine pronouns are themselves, of course, central to the monotheistic traditions’
conceptualization of the unique God The gendered nature of the monotheistic divinity is gener-
ally invisible to the contributors to the encyclopedic discussions. Indeed, the observation has pre-
occupied Christian and Jewish feminist theologians for over a generation, but its theoretical im-
756 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
me, however, is the suspicion that to focus on the divine unity and tran-
scendence as the principle taxonomic markers of monotheism over other
systems of religion—and the primary principle of its superiority as a re-
ligious worldview—is at the same time to ignore much that characterizes
monotheism as a system of religion.7 At least as crucial to the historical
expression of monotheistic religions as the uniqueness and unity of the
divine Being are the uniqueness and unity of the human community that
bears testimony in the world to that Being. To insist that the essential trait
of monotheism is its principle of divine unity and uniqueness over the
divine pluralities of polytheistic systems is in my view to miss something
crucial. Unexplained, at the very least, is the obvious historical reality of
the diversity and mutual hostility of exclusivistic monotheistic commu-
nities both before and after living polytheistic traditions ceased to threaten
the religious hegemony of monotheism per se.8
My goal in this article, accordingly, is to move comparative discus-
sion of Judaic, Christian, and Islamic monotheism a bit beyond the in-
herited boundaries. I do not lump them together as a single religious
worldview opposed to another hypostasized “polytheism.” Rather, I am
more concerned to understand monotheistic traditions by pointing out
ways in which the homologous structures of monotheistic discourse bring
monotheistic communities into virtually inevitable historical conflict. That
plications for the study of religion more generally have only recently begun to be explored in such
exemplary studies as Eilberg-Schwartz and Gross A sustained gender-oriented analysis of mono-
theistic discourses that focuses on the potential of monotheism to provide a hospitable environ-
ment for religious violence has recently been offered in Schwartz See the critique in Webb. My
own analysis shares much with Schwartz’s conclusions, although it proceeds from a rather differ-
ent conceptual starting point
7 In general it must be said that the moral superiority of monotheism over polytheism is more
commonly assumed rather than argued I, for one, am prepared to accept the possibility that the
ethical implications of monotheistic religions, when explored as abstract systems of thought, may
yield the universalist humanistic ethical imperatives that philosophical and theological proponents
claim for it. Indeed, the recent contribution of Goodman is perhaps one of the most stirring and
thoroughgoing defenses of monotheism written in over a generation To be sure, Goodman ac-
knowledges the reality that even the most lofty of ideals can be and have often been perverted in
historical enactment “When religion becomes a therapeutic mantra, political talisman or economic
wishing well, poetic toy or whipping boy, hex, curse, sexual icon, gambling fetish, permission giver,
or seller of indulgences, it robs itself not only of clarity and coherence but of value as religion” (31).
But by disqualifying such perversions of religion in history as counting toward the evaluation of
monotheism as a historical reality, Goodman seems to construct a monotheism of the intellectual
hothouse rather than a historical expression. While monotheism as a system of abstract thought
may indeed be a remarkable achievement, monotheism as a system of religion in the context of
historical and political conflict has achieved somewhat less than its theoretical formulations would
have promised. In what follows I attempt to understand why
8 Even Max Weber, perhaps the most perceptive sociological reader of religious ideas, ignores
the factor of a common and competing monotheistic vision in his discussion of the early separa-
tion of Judaism and Christianity See Weber 1952 404—424.
faffee: One God, One Revelation, One People 757
is to say, the very principle by which monotheistic communities distin-
guish themselves from surrounding polytheisms—the uniqueness of the
Creator of the world as a transcendent source of Being—is the rhetorical
engine that drives the determination of monotheistic communities to
remain distinct from and in competition with each other. We miss some-
thing crucial about monotheism if, in our focus on its own discourse re-
garding divine uniqueness, we fail to address the preoccupation with com-
munal uniqueness that is no less crucial to its structure as a historical
formation of religion.9
The thesis of this article, then, can be simply stated. Judaism, Chris-
tianity, and Islam are equally rich, historical embodiments of a single struc-
ture of discourse that underlies the historically developed symbol systems
specific to each community. In what follows, I attempt to identify these
key elements in the discursive structure of monotheism and to show how
the symbolic systems historically associated with Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam are deployed within this discursive structure. I then take up the
problem of the intensity with which monotheistic communities distin-
guish themselves from other such communities. I propose that it is the
profound structural similarities of these monotheisms that, after the dis-
appearance of polytheism as a culturally challenging alternative model of
piety, explains their persistence as discrete religious communities obses-
sively defining themselves not only over against some hypostasized “poly-
theism” but, more importantly, over against each other.
“ELECTIVE” AND “METAPHYSICAL” MONOTHEISM
Before moving fully into this discussion, I want to acknowledge first
of all that I have no intention of disregarding every canon of comparison
inherited from those who have reflected on the nature of monotheism.
Virtually all informed students of the topic have noted a crucial typologi-
cal distinction among monotheisms that seems worth preserving in our
theoretical toolbox. This is the distinction between conceptualizations of
divine unity that attempt to clarify thought in order to solve a philosophi-
cal problem and those in which the divine unity is framed as a discovery
9 In this enterprise I invert the tendency of early typologists of the history of religions to see Chris-
tianity and, with some reluctance, Islam as “universal” monotheisms that move beyond the “tribal”
monotheism of Israelite religion and Judaism. See C Tiele’s entry, “Religion,” in the eleventh edi-
tion of the Encyclopaedia Bntanmca (1911). Some remarkable reflections on this trend of thought
have now appeared in Masuzawa: 12-13, 20-24. In my view, monotheistic universalism as a philo-
sophical postulate is equally implicit in the theologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But in ac-
tual historical-political praxis, each monotheism reproduces the conditions for an expression of an
essentially exclusmst self-consciousness
758 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
of a moral imperative to transform a historical community in a project of
divine service.10 The former monotheism is commonly said to originate
in the Greek philosophical tradition, although parallels are often adduced
from classical Asian sources as well.” The latter is virtually always linked
in its origins to the Hebrew/Israelite prophetic traditions of the mid-first
millennium B.C.E., with a more or less vague acknowledgment of the
possibility of a Zoroastrian precedent. Postbiblical Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam are its historical heirs.
Thus we inherit from the nineteenth century such terms as ethical
monotheism or prophetic monotheism to describe the monotheistic tradi-
tions grounded in the notion that the unique God communicates his will
in the form of moral norms to especially selected founders of communi-
ties established in his name. Correspondingly, “philosophical” or “specu-
lative” monotheism often denotes those intellectual traditions that posit
the existence of a single source of all perfections and powers (beyond sen-
sory experience and intuited only by the clear of mind) that alone accounts
for the multiplicity of being in the empirical world.
It is commonly understood that from the time of Greco-Roman late
antiquity through the European Middle Ages, Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam appropriated various traditions of “philosophical” monotheism in
service of articulating and buttressing the claims of “prophetic” mono-
theism to constitute the total truth about God and the world. Each of these,
in its own ways, created a conceptual synthesis of the two forms of mono-
theism as truths of “reason” became the discursive form for articulating
the content of “revelation,” once the latter truths could be distilled from
their parabolic scriptural languages.
The resultant synthesis has had a profound impact on subsequent
religious thought in European Christendom and post-Christian reflection,
even among those who sought to disentangle the two traditions. In light
of the continued vitality of various versions of the medieval synthesis of
monotheistic philosophy with monotheistic religion, it remains crucial
10 To confine ourselves arbitrarily to the literature of encyclopedia entries, see Encyclopaedia
Brttanmca 1902. 238—239, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics: 819, and Encyclopaedia Judaica. 261
T Ludwig, in his entry in the Encyclopedia of Religion (238-239), offers a more refined taxonomy
worthy of consideration: “monarchic” monotheism (roughly equivalent to the no longer fash-
ionable “henotheism”), “emanational mystical” monotheism (including phenomena often de-
scribed as “monism” and “panentheism”), and “historical ethical” monotheism (the mainstream
traditions of Zoroastnanism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) The strength of Ludwig’s dis-
cussion is his acknowledgment that discrete developments within, say, “historical ethical” mono-
theism such as Judaism can take on the contours of, for example, “emanational mystical” mono-
theism and so on.
” See, for example, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, s v. “monotheism” (819) See also Good-
man’s discussion of Greek tradition (3-31)
Jaffee: One God, One Revelation, One People 759
to distinguish them at least for descriptive and analytical purposes. In-
deed, the very exercise of distinguishing them can serve as an important
first step in the construction of a proper comparative model for reflec-
tion on monotheism as a religious worldview refracted in distinct forms
in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The crucial point of differentiation, I
argue, is a simple one.
The conceptual activity that yields abstract reflections on the nature
of the one Being who sustains all beings is properly regarded as philosophi-
cal speculation about first principles. As such, I shall call it “metaphysi-
cal” monotheism. Such monotheism requires for its expression neither
ritual activity nor communal worship and entails no necessary ethical
postulates. It is an activity of thought, enacted within a community or
tradition of thought. As such, it is not properly part of the domain of the
phenomenology of religion but, rather, the history of ideas. In other words,
metaphysical monotheism, as the solution to an intellectual puzzle about
the grounds of the world’s coherence, may have some relevance to the
study of religion if its conceptual principles are adopted within liturgical
communities and woven into their ethical traditions. But metaphysical
monotheism is not of itself an expression of religion as a social and his-
torical form. Accordingly, I set it aside in the discussion of monotheism
as a historical pattern of religious myth, ritual, and community.
I focus, rather, on what I shall call “elective” monotheism, for this is
everywhere accompanied by the classical accoutrements identified by
historians of religion as universal aspects of religious life. Judaism, Chris-
tianity, and Islam are first and foremost liturgical communities, each
constituted (within conventional patterns of variation in diverse subcom-
munities) by common ritual forms, languages of prayer, canons of scrip-
ture and myth, and more or less cogently formulated traditions of ethical
behavior. Common to all of them is the carefully cultivated memory, func-
tioning also as an identity-defining mythos, of having been constituted
as a community from an antecedent condition of fragmentation and
normlessness.
It is the liberation from Egyptian servitude and the call to covenantal
bondedness at Sinai that define the origins of the Judaic communities.
Similarly, the communication of the spirit of prophecy at Christ’s ascen-
sion transforms a fragmented collection of disciples into a unified church.
Muhammad’s flight to Medina, in the same vein, serves as the historical
point of departure for Islam as a historical community distinguishable
from the piety of earlier prophets and the communities they founded. In
each of these traditions, the community is collectively called to serve in
the historical world as the distinctive human reflection of the will and love
of the unique Creator of heaven and earth. My choice of the term elective
760 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
monotheism attempts to capture the centrality of divine and human voli-
tion to these traditions. The essential marker of elective monotheism is
not the uniqueness of God alone. Rather, it lies in the desire of the unique
God to summon from out of the human mass a unique community estab-
lished in his name and the desire of that community to serve God in love and
obedience by responding to his call.
To sum up, “metaphysical” monotheism is a set of reflections on the
relationship of the abiding, eternal source of Being to concrete, transient
beings. It is a conceptual solution to intellectual puzzlement about the
origins of things. While metaphysical monotheists have indeed formed
schools, communal traditions, and ethical doctrines, they have rarely in-
sisted that such collective social creations constitute the sole appropriate
response to the reality of the creativity of the divine One or that only a
single human community could by its nature possess knowledge of the
truth. Elective monotheism, on the other hand, claims knowledge about
the relationship of the Creator of the world to a specific human commu-
nity in the world. It expresses the conviction of a yawning gap between
the Creator’s will and the obedience of the human order, and it obliges a
specific community to heal this gap through the moral transformation of
the human order. Surely, these two types of monotheism have had a rich
historical interrelationship in the history of Judaic, Christian, and Islamic
philosophical theology. But, in the end, they are phenomenologically
distinct.
THE DISCURSIVE STRUCTURE
OF ELECTIVE MONOTHEISM
Because the elective monotheism of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam
is a religious, rather than a primarily philosophical, phenomenon, its
structure must be distilled from the mythic narratives and liturgical life
that shape these communities’ historical identities. Expressed as abstractly
as possible, that discursive structure can be summed up quite simply. The
unique Creator of the world discloses his love and will in a unique mo-
ment of self-disclosure to a unique human community. As a result of this
self-disclosure, the community embarks on a collective endeavor of obe-
dient response to the Creator’s love and will. The purpose is to bring all
of humanity into proper moral relationship with the Creator. The unfold-
ing of time between the original self-disclosure and the community’s suc-
cessful completion of the mandate that called it into being is the histori-
cal process. History is the stage of the community’s struggle to be worthy
of its call. First, it struggles with its own internal resistance to the Creator’s
call, seeking to purge itself of flaws that it shares with humanity as a whole.
Jaffee: One God, One Revelation, One People 761
This is the struggle to embody obedience and faith both individually and
collectively. Second, but no less important, it struggles against the resis-
tance to its mandate of humanity beyond the community. The process of
history is concluded with the community’s ultimate fulfillment of its mis-
sion and the reconciliation of the human order with the divine love and
will.
This discursive structure, I propose, is common to all elective mono-
theisms. What changes are the particular symbolic configurations within
which the basic structure comes to idiomatic expression in each commu-
nity. In order to clarify this point, a simple diagram will be useful (see fig-
ure 1). We see in figure 1 that the discourse of elective monotheism oper-
ates on both a vertical and horizontal plane. The significance of each plane
is easily grasped.
The vertical plane expresses the ontological, cosmological, and moral
distance between the Creator and the order of the human world. This
distance, at any of its modes, is unspannable by human effort alone. It is
spanned only by the spontaneous and essentially mysterious act of the
Creator, his self-disclosure to a selected recipient community. In light of
this self-disclosure alone does the recipient community come to know the
truth of its distance from the Creator and the means of spanning that dis-
tance. Ontologically, this self-disclosure brings the Creator’s fullness of
being into correlation with the derivative being of the human order.
Human being thus recognizes that it is nourished from beyond itself.
Cosmologically, the Creator’s self-disclosure spans the distance between
heaven, the abode of the Creator, and earth, the domain of his created
beings. It unites, that is, various cosmological domains into a single order
under the Creator. Morally, this self-disclosure spans the difference be-
tween the source of all norms and the anomic or antinomian reality of
human nature. It enables community and communality not only within
the human order but between that order and its transcendent ground in
the Creator himself.
God the Creator
I
Self-Disclosure
I
Recipient Community > Historical Drama > Resolution
Fig. 1. Elective Monotheism.
762 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
This threefold spanning of the gaps between the Creator and the
world through divine self-disclosure has consequences that are worked
out through the horizontal plane, the plane of historical time. The recep-
tion of the Creator’s self-disclosure galvanizes the recipient community,
transforming it from a collection of fragmented, powerless individuals into
a focused center of unified action. Within the created order of nature it now
pursues a redemptive historical career, a struggle to make manifest through-
out the human world the reality of the Creator’s self-disclosure and to trans-
form the human order in correspondence to the Creator’s love and will.
The moment of the community’s success inaugurates, on the one hand,
the resolution of the historical process. On the other, it bridges at a new
level the various gaps that the Creator’s self-disclosure brings to human
awareness. At the end of history, the antinomies of being and nothing-
ness, heaven and earth, and good and evil are all overcome in a new syn-
thesis. Cosmos and history collapse into each other, establishing an un-
mediated community of Creator and creation, the unification of all reality.
What I have described here may be termed, loosely speaking, the langue
of elective monotheism, its metahistorical, abstract range of discursive
possibilities. Each form of elective monotheism is a distinct parole, a his-
torical mobilization of the discursive structure of elective monotheism in
a unique symbolic vocabulary, whose distinctive parameters and possi-
bilities of expression are worked out in the context of historical tradition.
The differences among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as expressions
of elective monotheism lie primarily within these discursive acts and are
identified with the traditional symbolic clusters that each tradition ar-
ranges along the vertical and horizontal axes I have drawn.
Anyone familiar with these traditions will have little trouble anticipat-
ing the way in which their traditionally mediated symbolic clusters will
be arranged along the structural pattern that enables their several historical
discourses. In figure 21 offer my own diagrammatic assessment. The body
of this article will attempt to spell out the implications of these symbolic
systems in greater detail. For the moment, let me only indicate briefly how
I conceive the relation of these models to their historical expressions in
each community.
Specialists in the study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam will justly
point out that the entirety of the discursive structure identified here ap-
pears only rarely with full stress on each of its constituent symbolic clus-
ters. That is, in diverse historical settings, each tradition may place greater
or lesser emphasis on the vertical or horizontal range of symbolic clus-
ters. Thus, for example, medieval philosophers meditating on the unity
of the truths of reason with those of revelation devoted most of their in-
tellectual energy to exploring the vertical axis of elective monotheism, in
Jaffee: One God, One Revelation, One People 763
Judaism
God of Creation
Torah
Israel > Exile > Messianic Age
Christianity
God of Creation
Christ
Ecclesia > Evangelism > Return of Chnst
Islam
God of Creation
Umma > Struggle > Judgment
Fig. 2. Symbolic systems of elective monotheism.
particular the nature of the divine Being and the character of the revela-
tion by which God disclosed his being to his community. In the diverse
millenarian movements that dot the history of the monotheisms, by con-
trast, the horizontal axis and its symbols emerged to prominence, as the
community of election sought to decode the signs pointing to the ordained
culmination of the historical process.
764 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
I recognize as well that, under pressure of polemic or in response to
innovations in intellectual climate, each of the symbolic clusters will un-
dergo a variety of interpretive transformations. One need only allude to
the Trinitarian and christological controversies of the early centuries of
Christianity as illustration of the morphological variety that the Christian
imagination has discerned in the symbols of the Creator and Christ. The
radical resignification of the entire Judaic symbolic cluster evident in
medieval cabalistic tradition—especially the introduction of multiple di-
vine hypostases into the symbolization of the Creator—is another well-
known historical example. One may point as well to the differences in
eschatological symbolism, explored later in this discussion, that distin-
guish the various Shi’ite conceptions of the Mahdi from the less person-
alized eschatological models of the Sunnite traditions.
These points I grant in advance. I insist only that before us are struc-
tures that comprehend and underlie most of the significant historically
available discourses that have emerged within each tradition from the
point at which each has identified itself as the bearer of a distinct religious
message in contrast to those available in its cultural and historical envi-
ronment. For my purposes, that point approximates the period during
which a more or less uniform canon of scriptural texts and associated tra-
ditions of interpretive exposition began to circulate widely in communi-
ties claiming continuity with the putative original recipient community
of the Creator’s self-disclosure. From this perspective, I hold that my
model of Judaism will serve virtually all forms of Judaic religion that have
emerged from the late Second Temple Period until our own day. Simi-
larly, the model of Christianity will hold from roughly the late third cen-
tury C.E., while that for Islam reflects historical formations of Islam since
the eighth century C.E.12
SYMBOLIC CLUSTERS AS OBJECTS OF COMPARISON
We may now begin to explore the implications of the schematic in
figure 2 for comparing and contrasting Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Space permits me to reflect here only on the structural wholes I have iden-
12 I do acknowledge that the modernist challenge to religious belief in general has engendered
crucial modifications of this structure in virtually all forms of Christianity and Judaism and among
reformist elements in Islam as well. In all of these, the exclusmsm of elective monotheism has proved
scandalous when measured against the egalitarian models of humanity that have emerged from the
European Enlightenment. But surely the last half of the twentieth century, which witnessed the re-
emergence of exclusivist monotheisms representing themselves precisely as antidotes to the ills of
modernity, suggests that the elective monotheisms may have indeed rediscovered the source of their
traditional social power.
Jaffee: One God, One Revelation, One People 765
tified above in a rather abstract way. Serious comparative work would
require isolation of specific, historically defined discursive communities
within each of the three main traditions as objects of comparison and
contrast. But insofar as this latter project depends on a cogent account of
the symbolic clusters in their ideal discursive structures, I shall satisfy
myself with a general account illustrated by broad, undeveloped allusions
to particular instances.
A glance at the discursive structure of each tradition makes it impos-
sible to evade a simple observation. For Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
the vertical axis of divine self-disclosure culminates in—and the horizontal
axis of historical process proceeds from—a single symbolic entity. This is
the recipient community that receives the One God’s gift of self-disclosure
and, in turn, bears responsibility for witnessing to that gift among the
peoples of the earth until the resolution of the historical process.
The recipient community is the object toward which the divine self-
disclosure is directed and is the subject of the redemptive drama, which
it enacts on behalf of both itself and the entire human order. That redemp-
tive drama is enacted in the first instance within the community’s liturgi-
cal life of formal worship, in which the community collectively realigns
itself with God. It is enacted in the second instance as the community turns
outward beyond itself toward other human communities in historical,
rather than liturgical, time, bearing the sign of God’s presence and the
word of God’s love and will to those who have not seen or heard. Thus,
while the symbolizations of the Creator constitute the object of adoration
in these monotheisms, it is the symbolizations of the receptive commu-
nity that constitute the nexus by which the Creator is brought into com-
munication with his creation and through which his redemptive strategy
is realized in time.
Comparison along the Vertical Axis
Let us first compare the three elective monotheisms along their verti-
cal axes in order to illustrate both their participation in a single discur-
sive structure and the symbolic creativity with which they make of that
structure a discourse uniquely their own. We begin with Judaism, whose
mythic self-understanding is canonized in the narrative tradition of the
Hebrew Bible. Here Israel (recipient community) receives Torah (divine
self-disclosure) from the God of Israel (the Creator) in the historical
Sinaitic covenant. God’s Word, in the form of commandment and prom-
ise preserved in scripture, is the active agent that discloses to Israel the
singular role that the community plays among the nations. As a commu-
nity of birth—the family of Abraham and the descendants of Jacob—
Israel is singled out from among other genealogically defined communi-
766 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
ties (e.g., Ishmael and Esau). It is distinguished from them only by its par-
ticular commission as disclosed to its ancestral patriarchs and its unique
prophet, Moses. That covenantal commission is defined as “service” and
“servitude”—a liturgical “service” in the form, first, of vicarious blood
sacrifice and, later, of statutory prayer; and a “servitude” defined through
submission to the will and rule of God as disclosed in the commandments
of the Torah itself. As a servant of God in both these senses, Israel serves
as well as a model to those beyond its social borders, a sign to the world
of God’s will for the world.
The vertical axis of the Christian discursive structure, like that of Ju-
daism, insists that the Creator discloses himself, his love and his will, to a
unique community in the form of his unique self-disclosure. In Chris-
tianity, however, the form of the self-disclosure and, correspondingly, the
community founded in response to it is the principle of distinction from
Judaism. For here, the self-disclosure is not communicated in the discur-
sive form of human language; rather, it is incarnate in the human form
itself, represented by Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, in Christianity, it is not only
a traditional canon of scripture but a historical, human life—that of
Jesus—that constitute the divine self-disclosure. It is precisely because the
form of this self-disclosure defies Israel’s received tradition of textual reve-
lation that a new community arises to respond to the radically new form
of divine self-disclosure. That community is no longer an ethnos, like
Israel, but a community of belief constituted by many peoples, an Ecclesia
(church). Carrying within it Israel’s memories (i.e., the Hebrew Scrip-
tures), and at times even its name (e.g., the “New Israel”), the Ecclesia is
nevertheless distinguished from Israel in its liturgical, sociological, and
historical dimensions.
Liturgically, it separates itself from ethnic Israel by reproducing the
sacrifice of Christ that brings an end to the efficacy of Israel’s sacrificial
system. That sacrifice, an act of overwhelming, self-annihilating, agapeic
love for creation, elicits the communal response framed more as love than
as obedience and servitude. It is the divine love that moves within the
Ecclesia as the spiritual Israel that the community of the faithful seeks to
share with those beyond the fleshly Israel. Its task is to incorporate all
human communities within the circle of divine love, to transform the
world beyond the Ecclesia into the Ecclesia itself as the New Israel. But
there will be more on this latter point when we move to the horizontal
axis of Christian symbolic discourse.
Islam, for its part, enters history long after the symbolic repertoires of
Judaism and Christianity assigned Israel and the Ecclesia the role of the
Creator’s historical agent. It is, then, well poised to appropriate with great
flexibility the antecedent discursive structure of Christian and Judaic
Jaffee- One God, One Revelation, One People 767
monotheism in light of its own native symbolic vocabulary. It will, as
needed, invoke rhetorical strategies of both Judaism and Christianity to
preserve its claim to constitute the unique recipient community of the
unique Creator’s unique self-disclosure.
Like Judaism, which schematizes the content of divine self-disclosure
within the symbol of Torah, Islam insists that the mediating self-disclo-
sure that links the will and love of God to the historical faithfulness of a
distinctive recipient community takes the form of human language rather
than a historical human being. But, in Islam, the Torah given to Israel is
relativized, the extant versions regarded as muddled human estimations
of the original, pure self-disclosure. It is precisely Israel’s mishandling of
Torah, and Christianity’s mishandling of a later divine self-disclosure in
the Gospel, that makes necessary a new and final self-disclosive initiative
on the part of the Creator.
Now, of course, it is the Quran—a supernal, eternal Book but a text
all the same—that discloses to the Umma, the community of those who
submit to the Creator in faith and deed, the meaning of its service and
servitude to God. At the same moment, the reception of the Quran as
disclosed through its historical Prophet distinguishes the community of
Islam from all others. Employing a supercessionist rhetoric refined in
Christian theological polemic against Judaism, Islam knows the Umma is
distinct from the historically older communities of Israel and the Ecdesia.
This is because its Prophet emerges most recently in the succession of
divine self-disclosures that now reach their intended perfection in the
record committed to Muhammad as the Quran.
Islam’s deployment of supercessionist rhetoric to stress its uniqueness
from its historical predecessors is evident in its model of the recipient
community. Although it is possible that, in the early career of the Prophet,
the Umma might have been conceived along familial or clan models fa-
miliar from Judaism, the rapid expansion of Islam quickly foreclosed the
possibility that the Umma would imagine itself as a distinctly Arab com-
munity. Like Christianity, Islam sets its social horizon beyond a commu-
nity of birth, even though the Quran is given in the first instance in the
Arabic language as a gift to the Arab nations. As the final act of divine self-
disclosure in human history, the giving of the Quran through the Prophet
Muhammad inaugurates a new community of faith rather than blood, the
Umma.
Islamic liturgical life, whether enacted in the spare motions of the daily
prayers or in the grand spectacle of universal pilgrimage to Mecca, is a
reenactment at the personal and collective levels of the act of submission
by which the Prophet of Islam established the community in God’s name.
In it, as in the Christian Ecclesia, the biological peoplehood of those who
768 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
submit to the name and will of God is rendered irrelevant. Nativity is
overcome (at least in principle) by inclusion into a broader community
of all those who submit regardless of ethnic origins.
These schematized readings of the symbolic clusters along the verti-
cal axes of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam already suggest important
patterns of overlap and distinction. Clearly, the distinction between Christ,
on the one hand, and Torah and Quran, on the other, as symbolizations
of the divine self-disclosure has had crucial theoretical and rhetorical re-
verberations in the historical disputes among these communities. Here
Judaism and Islam have tended to read the complexity of Christian
Trinitarian formulations as compromising the unity and uniqueness of
the Creator. In the same measure, Christianity and Islam have tended to
celebrate their own universality of vision at the expense of Israel’s ethnic
model of the recipient community, finding Judaism insufficiently ecu-
menical in its self-understanding as a microcosm of humanity.
We should conclude our discussion of the vertical axis of monotheis-
tic discourse, however, by reminding ourselves of what is shared. This axis
is not fundamentally concerned with the unique Creator, although, of
course, he plays a crucial role in the structure as the initiator of the world
process that sets the stage for his own self-disclosure and the redemptive
history over which he presides. Rather, of primary importance in the ver-
tical structure of symbols is the claim that the Creator enters into rela-
tionship with a selected and representative human community to which
he delivers knowledge of his love and will. Ultimately—that is, eschatol-
ogically—the entire human community is, of course, imagined as being
absorbed into the community of the faithful. But within historical time,
the redemptive drama is enacted within the social borders of the recipi-
ent community.
The vertical axis of elective monotheism, I conclude, is about a con-
versation, whose partners are the unique Creator and the unique com-
munity to which the Creator chooses to speak and through which he ex-
pects his will to be manifested. Judaism and Islam may indeed reject
Christian Trinitarianism as a deviation from the purity of monotheism;
and Christianity and Islam may agree that, in Judaism, the recipient com-
munity has been too narrowly defined as a community of birth. But each
tradition insists that God, however he may be imagined and however his
self-disclosure gains material expression, enters into commerce with only
one human group, defined by a mixture of blood and faith (Judaism) or
faith alone (Christianity and Islam). To be in communication with God,
ultimately, is to be in community with God’s unique People, the recipi-
ents of his unique self-disclosive Word. To participate in the life of the
recipient community is to define oneself over against some human Other
Jaffee: One God, One Revelation, One People 769
who stands—either temporarily or eternally—beyond the divine-human
conversation that transpires in the community of love and obedience.
Comparison along the Horizontal Axis
The crucial role of the communal Other in elective monotheism is only
suggested in its vertical axis of divine self-disclosure. However, as soon as
we turn to the horizontal axis of the historical drama and its resolution,
the Other becomes intrinsic to the system of symbolization. I have already
pointed out that, in Judaic, Christian, or Islamic terms, history is the do-
main in which the Creator’s special community works out a historical
mission that must necessarily culminate in an eschatological victory. In
the classical eschatologies transmitted in these traditions, a crucial element
in this ultimate victory is the judgment and punishment of the com-
munity’s (that is, the Creator’s) historical opponents and the incorpora-
tion of all remaining humanity into a unified polity under divine do-
minion. At the end of history, the recipient community of the unique
self-disclosure of the unique Creator stands vindicated in its historical
struggle to dominate the forces of evil arrayed against it and, by exten-
sion, against the Creator. History is the realm of struggle with the Other,
and the eschaton is the moment of the Other’s obliteration, either through
incorporation into the eschatological community or through the Other’s
explicit physical and spiritual annihilation.
The idea of a community in struggle, and the nature of the struggle, is
symbolized variously in each elective monotheism. Much, it seems, de-
pends on the specific relationship of the recipient community to worldly
power in the course of its struggle. In the case of Judaism, as is well known,
the recipient community has been for most of its history subject to, rather
than dominant over, the political-religious Other. Traces of a triumphant
imperial theory of Israel’s worldly success remain a minor chord in bib-
lical traditions, the residue of nearly forgotten Jerusalemite traditions from
the first millennium B.C.E. In historical Judaism they are dominated en-
tirely—both in the final version of the Hebrew Bible and in later rabbinic
traditions—by the overarching metaphor of Exile as the normative his-
torical condition of Israel.
Israel, that is, experiences itself as captive in the territory of—and
subject to domination by—the Other. Drawing on biblical personalities
that were even in ancient Israel personifications of polytheistic peoples,
Judaism has normally conceived the monotheistic Other as Esau (Chris-
tianity) or Ishmael (Islam). Removed from its own promised territory as
punishment for evading its mission of covenantal obedience, Israel en-
gages in a historical struggle, under the worldly dominion of Esau or
Ishmael, to purify itself of rebelliousness through penitential rededicat-
770 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
ion to covenant norms as disclosed in Torah (written and oral, as the rab-
binic sages would say). It thereby demonstrates to Esau and Ishmael the
abiding attention of the Creator to his creation, as proven in his preser-
vation of his unique People.
Political subjection to the Other never disconfirms Israel’s sense of
mission on behalf of God. Rather, it only heightens anticipation of the
ultimate transformation in power relations at the foreordained end, when
a descendant of the royal Davidic line that once ruled the Land of Israel
will be restored to his throne to preside over the Creator’s victory, the
restoration of Israel to the land that is the Creator’s special possession,
and the elevation of Israel to its former worldly glory and a transformed
eschatological kingdom of God.
Thus, Judaic messianism in the horizontal sphere of history is explic-
itly framed as a drama enacted for the instruction of the historical Other.
The Other now dominates in historical time. But in the end, the domina-
tor will either find destruction as the Creator’s enemy or, recognizing the
miracle of Israel’s elevation, will follow Israel itself into the unhindered,
perfect communication of the Creator and humanity as a whole.
Christianity and Islam are, no less than Judaism, committed in the
horizontal axes of their symbolic systems to the notion of a historical
drama in which the community of God is pitted in the world against forces
that reject the divine dominion. The Ecclesia, in the time between its recep-
tion of the Spirit and the ultimate return of Christ in his role as eschato-
logical redeemer, is commissioned to bring the good news of the Creator’s
self-sacrifice as Christ to every corner of the world so as to incorporate all
humanity into the community of the redeemed in readiness for his do-
minion. Similarly, the Islamic Umma, emerging from Muhammad’s own
unification of the political and religious spheres of Medinan society, seeks
in its expansion over the territories of conquered nations to dominate the
political order so as to create a space for the inner conquest of the rebel-
lious human spirit for God.
For significant stretches of their history, both Christianity and Islam
enjoyed the kind of worldly political success that Judaism could only re-
call from its distant past or long for in the eschatological future. Accord-
ingly, each of these recipient communities had ample opportunity to in-
terpret its political dominance as proof of the validity, in the Creator’s
sight, of its redemptive mission. Success within the world of history was
proof of the Creator’s continued guidance and protection that afforded
the Ecclesia or the Umma the opportunity to embody the truth and spread
it to the farthest corners of the world.
Characteristically, as we see in our discussion of Israel, territoriality
plays a crucial role in these symbolizations of communal mission. The
Jaffee: One God, One Revelation, One People 771
emergence of the idea of Christendom expresses a perception of political
dominance as the means of purifying the world for faith. Thus, as Chris-
tian late antiquity merged into the Christian Middle Ages, it became in-
creasingly clear that Christian lands—administered by secular princes on
behalf of the church—were sanctified for the Creator and his Word and
reserved for the Christian faithful. Heretics within the orbit of Christen-
dom and unbelievers from without—particularly, Muslims—were pol-
luting presences in the domain of Christ and, thus, were annihilated or
banished. The only tolerable non-Christian presence was the Jews, point-
ing by their very subjection under Christendom to the victory of the
Ecclesia in the world. They would be preserved until the foreordained
return of Christ to power and judgment. Then, finally, the spiritual blind-
ness and messianic stubbornness of the Jews would be confirmed as folly,
and the faith of the church would be made manifest even to the Jew in
Christ’s universal kingdom.
Islamic territoriality, the mirror of Christendom and Christendom’s
most challenging historical Other, is expressed in the conception of the
Domain of Islam, the territory pacified and unified in obedient service to
the Creator under Islamic political hegemony. Within it, other religious
communities—particularly those harboring a monotheistic revelation
prior to the final Islamic dispensation (the ahl al-kitab or “people of the
book,” extending at the least to Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians)—
exist only as “protected minorities,” contingent on their acceptance of
Islamic social and economic domination. At the borders of the Domain
of Islam there stretches the Domain of War; at that border, the Umma
engages in its worldly struggle to defend and expand the Domain of Islam.
Territory once sanctified for the Creator by Islam cannot be surrendered,
and its loss to Christendom is experienced, as in the nostalgia for al-
Andaluz, as tragedy and divine judgment.
Christian and Islamic interpretations of communal dominance as
confirmation of the community’s privileged relationship to the Creator
are not undermined by historical junctures in which the Ecclesia or the
Umma are politically disenfranchised or otherwise dominated by a com-
munal Other. At such moments, these monotheistic communities make
use of what must be called a “Judaic” rhetoric for interpreting the com-
munity’s historical experience. Instead of the dislocative symbol of Exile,
however, these communities develop other symbolic means for grasping
political domination by the polytheistic or monotheistic Other as a time
of trial and witnessing for the truth of God’s love and special care for his
recipient community.
Indeed, in the history of Christianity, this mode of historical interpre-
tation precedes the emergence of Christendom as a hegemonic political-
772 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
religious culture with a territorial domain to defend. Grounded in the
images of Christ’s own self-sacrifice that stand so centrally in the New
Testament scriptural canon, it provided an apt interpretive frame for mak-
ing intelligible the “witnessing-unto-death” of Christian martyrs subjected
to a series of persecutions between the second and early fourth centuries.
Prior to the creation of a uniquely Christian geographical space, concep-
tions of “exile” could have no meaning in Christian self-consciousness. But
the willingness to endure physical pain and violent, terrifying death in public
spectacles of martyrdom was transformed symbolically as the collective
experience of the Ecclesia, in preparation for its exaltation in the rapidly
approaching Parousia. In the time prior to Christ’s return to the world,
the Ecclesia became the community of Christlike suffering in the world and
proclaimed faith that the model of Christ’s own resurrection anticipated
its own. Thus, suffering in testimony to the Creator and his Word (as Son)
became the symbolic center for interpreting the Ecclesia’s historical expe-
rience. This formulation of the Ecclesia’s mission as victory over the Other
through domination by the Other remained an ever present rhetorical op-
tion in Christian communities that, even during the age of Christendom’s
existence, either fell victim as “heretics” to persecution by the official Ecclesia
itself or found themselves captive in Islamic lands. It is retrievable, of course,
in any historical circumstance in which a Christian community is domi-
nated by a worldly power and the price of Christian faith may be social
marginalization, suffering, or even death.
A similar symbolization of the historical powerlessness of the recipi-
ent community emerges in Islamic history in conjunction with the po-
litical division within the Umma that ultimately came to distinguish
Sunnite and Shi’ite communities. Rejecting the legitimacy of a caliphate
that had passed beyond the grasp of the family of the Prophet, the Party
of Ali interpreted its own disenfranchisement within the Domain of
Islam as a sign of its historic faithfulness to the Creator. Exiled not from
territory but from the worldly power rightfully its own as the authentic
Umma, the Shi’a chose symbolizations of martyrdom of the Alide line in
order to grasp its own historical situation and redemptive mission. De-
spite the fraudulent worldly power of the Sunni caliphate, the Shi’a culti-
vated confidence that a series of occulted imams continued to guide the
true recipient community in the loyal service of the Creator.
It is precisely in Shi’ite Islam, moreover, that Islamic eschatological
thought comes closest to the messianic symbolizations more characteris-
tic of Judaism and Christianity than of the Sunni tradition. In both Twelver
and Sevener Shi’ite traditions, the last in the series of occulted imams—
the Mahdi—awaits, like Judaism’s messiah or Christianity’s Christ,
the foreordained moment of his historical return to preside over the
eschatological victory of the Creator’s recipient community and the
Jaffee. One God, One Revelation, One People 773
punishment of the Other who had once dominated in defiance of the
Creator.
The pattern we have discerned in the horizontal axis of each of the
elective monotheisms is so clear as to require no further elaboration. Elec-
tive monotheism’s preoccupation with the historical drama of the recipi-
ent community is explicitly built upon an assumption of necessary con-
flict and embattlement between those who serve the unique Creator and
those who either do not know him or reject him. Within historical time,
the Creator’s presence and love are coterminous with the borders of the
recipient community, nurturing it in its battle against the Other, the ne-
gation of the recipient community, and the enemy of the Creator. The
resolution of that conflict, achieved eschatologically, entails either the
ultimate annihilation of the historical Other (damnation or excision from
communication with God) or the Other’s incorporation into the final
community of humanity, imagined as the recipient community univer-
salized, that acknowledges the Creator’s lordship and sovereignty.
SOME CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
It is not uncommon among theological interpreters of elective mono-
theism—whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim—to celebrate the “univer-
salism” of monotheism and to identify this universalism as the principle
that ultimately distinguishes monotheism as a form of religion “higher”
than polytheism. That is to say, the compression of divine reality from
diverse centers of the sacred in creation into a single God who transcends
creation is more than simply a rational advance over polytheism (as a
metaphysical monotheist might argue). More crucially, we are told, it is a
moral advance. Elective monotheism makes it possible as well to imagine
a single human community, all equally beloved of the Creator as his crea-
tures. This entails the moral imperative of universal love throughout the
wide range of humanity, the unification of all humanity into a single moral
community, bound both to the Creator of the world and to each other.13
As a historian of religion, I would respond that the universalism im-
plicit in elective monotheism’s conception of the Creator as the unique
source of transcendent holiness is consistently negated by a powerful and
13 For example, Goodman writes: “In a culture where right is proportioned to power it might
seem absurd to claim that the standing of an orphan, a widow, or a stranger before the law must be
no less than that of the most powerful and prosperous. From the vantage point of the Absolute
Source of all values, it can be no less. The God of monotheism universalizes mutuality, extending
concern not only to the helpless or oppressed but to all persons. The Torah marks out the dignity
of personhood even as it lays down the command to love one another as we love ourselves No
syllogism is needed, and none would be of value here. Rather, the Law spins human dignity out of
sympathy, at the spindle of God’s universality” (102)
174 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
immensely attractive countervailing element of elective monotheism. This
is, as I have argued, the mythos of the recipient community whose narra-
tive of self-definition moves ineluctably along the vertical and horizontal
axes of elective monotheism’s historical discourse. The universalist moral
implications of elective monotheism, which emerge in the calm interior
of the theologian’s study, have not much to do with the way in which
monotheism is embodied in living sociohistorical systems of religion. As
I have tried to show, the reason is that elective monotheism’s universal-
ism is predominantly enacted eschatologically rather than historically.
History, that is, is the realm of struggle against the communal Other; the
eschaton is the moment at which, if at all, that Other is identified with the
Self and bound up in a universalist moral community.
Elective monotheism, as opposed to its metaphysical counterpart, is not
primarily about God as he is in himself or in relationship to the created order
of nature. It is much more about God as he is in relationship to historical
human communities—a relationship characterized by the opposition of love
and hate. Elective monotheism is driven by the assumption that the God
who loves does not do so indiscriminately; rather, the divine love is a scarce
commodity. Knowledge that it exists is disclosed only to a segment of the
human community. The means of obtaining it are carefully preserved for
those within the communal boundary. The mandate to celebrate it neces-
sarily entails conflict with those who insist on their own traditions for gain-
ing entry into the circle of divine love. The possession of divine love, at least
at the level of the historical testimony to its presence within the commu-
nity, is itself the warrant for ontological hatred of the very existence of the
Other. It is perhaps some comfort that such hatred can be overcome
eschatologically. But the eschatological ethic of inclusiveness in redemp-
tion makes only rare appearances on the historical stage on which the vari-
ous elected communities struggle for domination. On the plane of history,
the capacity of God to love intensely and exclusively is translated, as often
as not, into the human capacity to hate intensely.
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A k a d e m i k A r a $ t i r m a l a r D e r g i s i 2 0 0 5 , S a y i 2 6 , S a y f a I a r 1 9 1 – 2 1 0
The Concept of Revelation According to
the Bible and the Qur’an
Niyazi BEKI*
The main objective of this article is to itivestigate the tneaning of revelation
in the Bible and the Qur’an. My basic question can be formulated as follows:
Can the authenticity of revelation as a sacred text be established through its
(verbatim) words, or through its meaning, or through both? To provide a
general background, I shall start with the concept of revelation in the three
Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I shall make some brief
comparative remarks about the Jewish and Christian notions of revelation to
show their common ground with the Islamic concept of revelation. The main
focus of the paper, however, will be the concept of revelation in the Islamic
tradition. If one understands that these three faiths share the same source of
revelation, then the believers of these faiths can accord equal respect to one
another and engage not only in dialogue, but also might learn to heed the call
that has echoed throughout their scriptures. As it is described in the Qur’an:
“The truth is from thy Lord: so be not at all in doubt. To each is the goal which
Allah turns him: than strive together as in a race to all that is good.
Wheresoever ye are, Allah will bring you together. For Allah hath power over
all things” (2:147-148).’
Revelation is a divine communication to human beings. “It is the
phenomenon whereby a supra human, or supernatural, communication is
transmitted from the Divine to humankind or in which the manifestation or
epiphany of the Divine occurs which presents itself to the human sight, hearing,
sensibility, and consciousness as an event out of the ordinary course.”^ As
such, writes Johannes Deninger in The Encyclopedia of Religion, revelation is
comprised of the most “diverse experiences.”^ He explains that
phenomenologists of religion divide the characteristics of revelation into five
categories:
1. Origin or author: God, spirits, ancestors, power, forces. In all of these
cases, the source of revelation is something supernatural or numinous.
2. Instrument or means: sacred signs in nature […], dreams, visions,
ecstasies; finally, words or sacred books.
3. Content or object: the didactic, helping, or punishing presence, will,
being, activity, or commission of the divinity.
4. Recipients or addressees: medicine men, sorcerers, sacrificing priests,
shamans, soothsayers, mediators, prophets with a commission or information
intended for individuals or groups, for a people or the entire race.
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5. Effect and consequence for the recipient: personal instruction or
persuasion, divine mission, service as oracle — all this through inspiration or,
in the supreme case, through incarnation.”*
These characteristics of revelation can also apply to the Islamic notion of
revelation. This shows that we can find a relationship between the Islamic and
Biblical concept of revelation. With this point in mind, we now turn to the
Jewish concept of revelation as the Jews were the first people to have a revealed
book.
I. The Jewish Concept of Revelation
Jewish tradition emphasizes that Abraham broke the idols and false gods in
his father’s household by smashing them into pieces. Little by little Abraham
began to receive words and promises from God that formed the basis of a
mutual agreement called a Covenant. Then, God revealed the Torah to Moses.
He first sent a law because the pagan world was in a state of anarchy and
needed the direction and discipline that only law could bring. Exodus 24:12
reads: ‘The Lord said to Moses, ‘Come up to me on the mountain, stay there,
and let me give you the stone tablets with the law and commandment I have
written down for their instruction.” The tablets are described in Exodus 32:15-
16: “Moses went back down the mountain holding the two tablets of the
Testimony, inscribed on both sides, on the front and the back. The tablets were
the handiwork of God, and the writing was God’s writing, engraved on the
tablets.” The law that was sent to Moses was of two kinds: ritual law and moral
law, and both are found in various parts of the Torah and the other books of the
Old Testament.’
The essence of revelation according to the Old Testament or the Hebrew
Bible as it is called in the Jewish tradition consists precisely of this self-
communication of God to His people as He makes himself known to them (Ex.
64:2) and speaks to them (Ex. 25:22). The word of God is spoken in a special
way to Moses (Ex. 20:18). God’s word to Israel is His most precious gift; in it
He communicates himself: “I am the Lord” (Gn. 28:13; Ex. 6:2, 6:29) and
“there is no other” (Is. 45:5).
In light of the above, we can say that the Jewish concept of revelation is
based on God’s direct communication to the people through books and
commandments. “We believe,” says Maimonides, “that the Torah reached
Moses from God in a manner that is described in Scripture figuratively by the
term ‘word’ and that nobody has ever known how it took place except Moses
himself to whom the word reached.”^ When God spoke with Moses at Sinai,
“there was neither a physical voice nor a physical perception but rather a
spiritual voice.”‘
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II. The Christian Concept of Reveiation
The New Testament writers see revelation as the self-communication of God
in and through Jesus Christ. This communication is regarded as the supreme,
fmal, irrevocable, and unsurpassable self-disclosure of God in history. In Jesus,
the agent of revelation and content of revelation are identical and make up the
sole object of revelation. According to The Encyclopedia of Religion,
“Revelation is therefore given together with the person of the Logos (the
Word); it is the manifestation of the life and love of God. Because Jesus is the
only-begotten Son, he reveals the Father in what he says and does.” Indeed, in
John 14:9, Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
The classic formula explaining the concept of revelation is that God is the
author of both the Old and New Testaments. Throughout the history of
Christian thought, the Scriptures have been called the word of God and
identified with revelation. In the Qamus al-Kitab al-Muqaddas (The Dictionary
of the Bible) revelation is described as the “indwelling of the Spirit of God in
the spirit of the inspired writers in order that they might know spiritual truths
and unseen matters without anything of the personality of these writers being
lost. Thus each of them retains their own style and mode of expression.” In the
same vein, the First Vatican Council said of the Scriptures that “because they
were written as a result of the prompting of the Holy Spirit, they have God for
their author”.'” Similarly, in the twentieth century, the Protestant evangelist Dr.
Billy Graham said that “the Bible is a book written by God through thirty
secretaries”.”
Revelation occupies a central place in the Christian tradition. First of all, it
is basic to the Christian faith that God is a personal God who has spoken to
men. He has initiated a dialogue with them, in which they are invited to listen to
His words, and to respond. His words are revelation, and man’s response is
faith.’^ God, who through the Word creates all things (John 1:3) and keeps them
in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities
(Rom. 1:19-20). In time. He appointed and called Abraham in order to make of
him a great nation (see Gen. 12:2). Then, after speaking in many and varied
ways through the prophets, “now at last in these days has spoken to us in His
son.””
As God’s direct revelation, Jesus Christ may be said to have three, aspects or
functions, as follows:
1. Jesus represents the moral character of God. According to this view,
Jesus is God’s revelation in the sense that he exemplifies for us what God is
like. The moral attributes of God can also be attributed to a human being, and it
is these qualities that Jesus reflects in his human aspect. For example, God is
compassionate and forgiving, Jesus practiced compassion and forgiveness in his
own life and death. From Jesus’ human love we can see what God’s love is like.
2. Jesus reveals the universal possibility of the Union between the Divine
and the Human. This second view states that Jesus reveals “God-in-humanity”
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as a universal possibility of human life. Here Jesus’ function takes on a more
spiritual and metaphysical sense and goes beyond mere ethics.
3. Jesus reveals the unique presence and act of God. In this view, it is Jesus
who reveals and embodies the unique presence of God in human life.’*
In the light of these considerations, we can identify three major views of
revelation in the Christian tradition. The first is the revelation sent to the
Biblical Prophets, which Christianity shares with both Judaism and Islam. This
refers to all the revealed messages and the word of God written in the Old
Testament. The second is the revelation sent to the authors of the scriptures, that
is, the apostles who, according to the Christian view, have been divinely
“inspired” to write down the Gospels. The third meaning of revelation pertains
directly to Jesus himself as he is believed to be the Word of God. As we shall
see below, these three meanings of revelation in Christianity have both
similarities and differences with the Islamic concept of revelation, to which I
now turn.
III. The Islamic Concept of Reveiation
Islam’s understanding of revelation is very much like that of the Bible,
especially the Old Testament. Wahy or revelation comes from God, usually
through the agency of the archangel Gabriel. “Revelation is the act by which
God, having created the world, proceeds to disclose Himself to His own
creation, acting in His capacity as hadi (Guide). As such the term embraces any
act of self-disclosure, beginning with God’s addressing our First Parents in the
Garden, and proceeding through a series of disclosures to prophets of both
categories, rusul and anbiya’, culminating in a final defmitive act of disclosure
known as khatm an-nubuwwa, or Seal of Prophethood.”” It is unanimously
accepted by Muslim scholars that revelation is given to prophets and, in its
defmitive and fmal form, to the Prophet Muhammad. In the Qur’an, the content
of revelation is wisdom and guidance for living and, above all, warnings and the
announcement of the fmal judgment. Since revelation is divine in its origin, it
cannot be altered.’*
To support the above, the Qur’an says:
We have sent you revelation [wahy ] as we sent it to Noah and the
messengers after him: We sent revelation to Abraham and Ismail, Isaac, Jacob
and the tribes, to Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron, and Solomon, and to David We gave
the Psalms. Of some messengers We have already told you the story; of others
We have not — and to Moses Allah spoke directly. Messengers who gave good
news as well as warnings, that mankind, after (the coming) of the messengers
should have no plea against Allah: For Allah is Exalted in Power and Wise
(4:163-65)”
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Wahy means to inspire, or to communicate something in a manner that is not
obvious or apparent to someone else. In the Qur’an it is referred to in the
following contexts:
1. The natural order and laws of nature. The Qur’an says, ‘Then He
completed and fmished their creation (as) seven heavens, and He inspired in
each heaven its affair” (41:12). This can be considered as the natural laws, such
as the orbits of the planets and the rotation of the earth, etc.
2. Natural animal instinct. The Qur’an says, “And your Lord inspired the
bee, saying, take as habitations mountains, and in the tree and in what
(mankind) builds, than, eat of all fruits, and follow the ways of your Lord.”
(16:68-69)
This signifies the natural animal instinct that every creature is endowed
with:
Bees, for example, instinctively build their hives and search for nectar from
flowers.
3. Human intuition and emotion. This type of inspiration is also called
ilhdm.
The Qur’an says, “And we inspired the mother of Moses, ‘Suckle him! But
when you fear for him, then cast him into the river and fear not, nor grieve”
(28:7) In this case, the mother of Moses knew that if she were to leave her baby
to float on the river, Allah would protect him, since she had received this ilham
from Allah. This type of inspiration, however, does not make its recipient a
prophet.
4. Signals or gestures to communicate. When Allah forbade Zacharia from
speaking for three days: “he came out unto his people, and inspired them (by
gestures and signs) to glorify Allah’s praises in the morning and afternoon”
(19:11)
In this verse, the gestures that Zacharia performed have been called an
‘inspiration’ since he did not pronounce his intent.
5. Evil whispers from Satan. Allah says in the Qur’an: “and of a certainty the
devils inspire their cohorts (amongst mankind) to dispute with you” (6:121).
And again, “And thus We have appointed for every prophet an enemy-devils
among mankind and jinn, inspiring one another” (6:112).
6. Guidance to the angels from Allah. The Qur’an says, “(Remember) When
your Lord inspired the angels, ‘I am with you, so keep firm those who have
believed” (8:12).
7. Inspiration and revelation to the prophets. This category is the subject of
our present investigation. It is the primary meaning of the word wahy when used
in the context of Islamic sciences.
8. The primary verse that explains the types and categories of wahy is
Allah’s statement: “It is not possible for any human being that Allah should
speak to him, unless it be by inspiration, or from behind a veil, or (that) He
sends a Messenger to reveal what He will by His Permission. Verily, He is the
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Most High, Most Wise” (42:51). Moreover, “It is for Us to collect it and recite
it. When we have recited it, then follow its recitation” (75:17-8). Also, “And if
any of the idolaters seeks your protection, then grant him protection, so that he
may hear the word of Allah” (9:6).
The Truth of Wahy
The truth of revelations prevails at all instants over all parts of the World of
the Unseen, with a most powerful manifestation. There comes with the truths of
revelation and inspiration proceeding from the One All-Knowing of the Unseen,
a testimony to His existence and unity far stronger than testimony of the
universe and created beings. He does not leave Himself, His existence and His
unity, only to the testimony of His creatures. Rather, He speaks with a pre-
eternal Speech consonant with His own being. The Speech of the One Who is
all-present and all-seeing everywhere with His Knowledge and Power is also
endless, and just as the meaning of His Speech makes Him known, so does His
discourse make Himself known together with His attributes.
The truth, reality, and existence of revelation has been made plain to the
point of being self-evident by the consensus of one hundred thousand prophets
(pbut), by the agreement among their proclamations concerning the
manifestation of Divine revelation; by the evidences and miracles contained in
the sacred books and heavenly pages, which are the guides and exemplars of the
overwhelming majority of humanity, confirmed and assented to by them, and
are the visible fruits of revelation. In fact, the truth of revelation proclaims five
sacred truths.’^
“The First: To speak in accordance with men’s intellects and
understandings, known as ‘Divine condescension to the minds of men,’ is a
form of Divine descent. It is a requirement of God’s sovereignty that He
endows all of his conscious creatures with speech, understands their speech, and
then participates in it with His own speech.
“The Second: The One Who, in order to make Himself known, fills the
cosmos with His miraculous creations and endows them with tongues speaking
of His perfections, will necessarily make Himself known with His own words
also.
“The Third: It is a function of His being Creator to respond in words to the
supplications and offerings of thanks that are made by the most select, the most
needy, the most delicate and the most ardent among His beings – true men.
“The Fourth: The attribute of Speech or parole of God, an essential
concomitant and luminous manifestation of both Knowledge and Life, will
necessarily be found in a comprehensive and eternal form in the being Whose
Knowledge is comprehensive and Whose Life is eternal.
“The Fifth: It is a consequence of Divinity that the Being Who endows men
with impotence and desire, poverty and need, anxiety for the future, love and
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worship, should communicate His own existence, by way of His speech, to His
most loved and lovable. His most anxious and needy creatures, who are most
desirous of finding their Lord and Master.”
The evidences for the existence in unity of the Necessary Existent offered in
unanimity by universal and heavenly revelations, which contain the truths of
Divine descent, dominical self-proclamation, compassionate response. Divine
conversation, and eternal self-communication, constitute a proof more powerful
than the testimony for the existence of the sun brought by the rays of sunlight.
Understanding this and looking in the direction of inspiration, we see that
veracious inspiration indeed resembles revelation in some respects and is a
mode of dominical speech. There are, however, two major differences between
revelation and inspiration.
The first difference: Revelation, which is much higher than inspiration,
generally comes by the medium of angels, whereas inspiration generally comes
directly. For instance, a king has two modes of speech and command.
The first consists of his sending to a governor a lieutenant equipped with all
the pomp of monarchy and the splendour of sovereignty. Sometimes, in order to
demonstrate the splendour of his sovereignty and the importance of his
command, he may meet with the intermediary, and then the decree will be
issued.
The second consists of his speaking privately in his own person, not with the
title of monarch or in the name of kingship, concerning some private matter,
some petty affair, using for this purpose a trusted servant, some ordinary
subject, or his private telephone.”
In the same way the Pre-Eternal Monarch may either, in the name of the
Sustainer of All the Worlds, and with the title of Creator of the Universe, speak
with revelation or the comprehensive inspiration that performs the function of
revelation, or He may speak in a different and private fashion, as the Sustainer
and Creator of all animate beings, from behind the veil, in a way suited to the
recipient.
The second difference: Revelation is without shade, pure, and reserved for
the elect. Inspiraition, by contrast, has shades, colours intermingle with it, and it
is general. There are numerous different kinds of inspiration, such as the
inspiration of angels, the inspiration of men, and the inspiration of animals;
inspiration thus forms a field for the multiplication of God’s words that are as
numerous as the drops in the ocean. Our traveller understood that this matter is,
indeed, a kind of commentary on the Qur’anic verse,
“Were the sea to become ink for the words of my Sustainer, verily the sea
would be exhausted before the words of my Sustainer” (18:109).
Then looking at nature we can see that the wisdom and the testimony of
inspiration are composed of four lights.
The first: it is the result of God’s Lovingness and Mercifulness that He
makes himself loved through word, presence and discourse, in the same way
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that He makes Himself loved to His creatures through His deeds.
The second: it is a requirement of His Compassionateness that just as He
answers His servants’ prayers in deed. He should also answer them in word,
from behind veils.
The third: it is a concomitant of sovereignty that just as He responds in
deed to the cries for help, supplications, and pleadings of those of His creatures
who are afflicted with grievous misfortunes and hardships, so too He should
hasten to their help with words of inspiration, which are like a form of speech.
The fourth: God makes His existence, presence and protection perceptible
in deed to His most weak and indigent. His most poor and needy, conscious
creatures, that stand in great need of finding their Master, Protector, Guardian,
and Disposer. It is a necessary and essential consequence of His Divine
solicitousness and His dominical compassion that He should also communicate
His presence and existence by speech, from behind the veil of veracious
inspiration -a mode of dominical discourse- to individuals, in a manner peculiar
to them and their capacities, through the telephone of their hearts.
If the sun, for example, had consciousness and life, and if the seven colours
of sunlight were the seven attributes, in that respect it would have a form of
speech through the rays and manifestations found in its light. And in this
situation both its similitudes and reflections would be present in all transparent
objects, and it would speak with all mirrors and shining objects and fragments
of glass and bubbles and droplets of water, indeed with all transparent particles,
in accordance with the capacity of each; it would respond to the needs of each,
and all these would testify to the sun’s existence; and no task would form an
obstacle to any other task, and no speaking obstruct any other speaking. This is
self-evident.^”
The Scientific Value of the Inspiration
The scientific value of inspiration depends on various factors from the
personality of the inspired to the aim of the inspiration. The spiritual ranks that
are earned through the moral proximity toward God as well as the inspirations
given to the heavens and some animals for their vital duties play a big role over’
the rise of the scientific value of inspiration. As an example, we can quote the
following verses from the Qur’an:
“So He completed them as seven firmaments in two days, and He assigned
to each heaven its study and command” (41:12).
“And your Lord taught the Bee to build its cells in hills, on trees, and in
(men’s) habitations. Then to eat of the produce (of the earth), and follow the
ways of your Lord made smooth: there issues from within their bodies a drink
of varying colours; wherein is healing for men: verily in this is a sign for those
who give thought” (16:68-69).
Besides the verses of the Holy Qur’an, there are some hadTth (traditions of
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the Prophet) pointing to the existence of inspiration. For instance. The Prophet
said, “Beware of the believer’s perspicacity, verily, s/he sees with the light of
Allah.”^’ And, “Before your time there were some people who were given
inspiration; if in my Ummah (the Muslim Community) a person is to be given
inspiration, verily, it will be Umar (The second Caliph).”^^ And, “Verily, the
Holy Spirit whispered in my heart that a person will never die until his
(preordained) time comes.”^^ This last hadith indicates that the Prophet(s)
received inspiration as well as revelation. However, according to most of the
Islamic scholars the inspiration given to mankind as stated above is not an
epistemological source for definitive knowledge.̂ **
Wahy and Ilham/ Revelation and Inspiration
The term ‘inspiration’ is commonly used to translate the Arabic word ilham.
It is commonly applied by Muslims to a form of communication of divine truth
to saints and holy people. This differs from wahy, ‘revelation’, in that it does
not consist of messages for the whole community, but only of private messages
for the individuals receiving it, even though for them it may be a true basis for
action. Christians would certainly claim that what they have in the non-
prophetic books of the Bible is closer to wahy than to ilham.^^
The Stage of Revelation
The vast majority of scholars hold the opinion that the process of revelation
occurred in three stages: In the First, the Qur’an, the word of God in Islam, was
written on the Preserved Tablet/Law/i al-Mahfuz, which is with God. The fact
that the Qur’an is written on the Preserved Tablet is mentioned in the Qur’an
itself: “Nay! This is indeed a Glorious Qur’an! (inscribed) in the Preserved
Tablet/Law/i al-Mahfuz” (85:21-2). And also, “And this is indeed a noble
Qur’an; In a Book well-guarded i.e., Lawh al-Mahfuz)” (56:77-78). ‘Thus the
Qur’an affirms that it is but the transcript of a celestial archetype, which is why
the Prophet is abjured to add or subtract nothing but to adhere strictly to the text
that is given him,” that is, by the Archangel Gabriel. Indeed, “the Qur’an is
described as ‘an unassailable scripture’ which ‘Falsehood cannot come at from
before or behind, a disclosure [tanzil: sending down] from the Wise, the
Laudable'(41:42).^*
Part of the reason fot this stage is to prove to the believers the authenticity
of the Qur’an, as it was written down even before its revelation, in a place that
guaranteed its preservation. This is also a manifestation of the infinite
knowledge of God.^’ The Qur’an describes the Lawh al-Mahfuz as having
everything -small and big – recorded in it (54:53).
The Second Stage
From the Preserved Tablet/Law/i al-Mahfuz, Allah revealed the Qur’an to
the lower heavens, in a place called “The House of Honor” (al-Bayt al- ‘tzzah).
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This revelation occurred in Ramadan, on the Night of Decree (tMylat al-
Qadr)}^ The proof for this is found in some verses of the Qur’an: ‘The month
of Ramadan is the month in which the Qur’an was revealed” (2:185), and “We
have sent it (the Qur’an) down, on a Blessed Night” (44:3). The Qur’an later
specifies this Blessed Night as, “We have sent it down on the Night of Power”
(97:1).
The Third Stage
The final stage of revelation is alluded to by Ibn Abbas in his previous
narration. In this stage, Gabriel brought those portions of the Qur’an which
Allah commanded him to bring. The Qur’an refers to this revelation in many
verses. In one of these Allah says, “And truly, this Qur’an is a revelation from
the Lord of the worlds; which the Trustworthy Spirit (Archangel Gabriel)
brought down; Upon your heart (O Muhammad) so that you may be among the
Warners” (26:192-4).
This gradual revelation occurred over a period of twenty-three years.^’ This
narration does not mention that Gabriel took the Qur’an from the Preserved
Tablet/Lflw/i al-Mahfuz. However, some scholars have inferred from these
narrations that Gabriel took the Qur’an from the Preserved Tablet. But other
scholars stated that Gabriel heard the Qur’an from Allah and took the Qur’an
from the Preserved Tablet.^” As al-Zarqani states, whether Gabriel took the
Qur’an from the Preserved Tablet or not is “not of great importance, as long as
we are sure the source of revelation is Allah alone.”^’
However, some scholars claim that Gabriel received the Qur’an only in
meaning and not in words, and brought it to the heart of the Prophet. Therefore
they hold that the wording of the Qur’an is either from Gabriel or Muhammad.^^
The majority of Muslim scholars, however, are of the opinion that the Qur’an is
the speech of God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in meaning and word.
Some scholars have discussed this issue under several headings, which can be
summarized as follows:
1. The Qur’an is revealed only as meaning
The proponents of this view base their claims on the following verses:
a. “Verily this is the word of an honored Messenger (Gabriel). Endowed
with Power, with rank before the Lord of the Throne” (S.81:19-20). “So I do
call to witness what ye see, and what ye see not. That is verily the word of an
honored messenger (Muhammad), it is not the word of a poet; Little it is Ye
believe!”(S. 69. 38-48). The expression that “the Qur’an is the word of the
honored Messenger” is inserted here because the ‘word’ indicates that the word
ofthe Qur’an belongs to those messengers.”^
b. “Without doubt it is (announced) in the revealed Books of former
peoples” (S. 26:196) shows that the Qur’an was placed in the Scriptures which
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were revealed before. According to that explanation we can say that the Qur’an
is a revelation in meaning only.'”*
We can respond to these claims in a comparative way. In the first verse
quoted above (a), the expression “the Word of the honored Messenger” does
not mean that the words of the Qur’an belong to messengers because it was not
revealed in the first person of the verb. What it indicates is that the Prophet who
received revelation was an honored person who was worthy of honor on
account of the purity of his life, and could be relied upon not to invent things
but to relate in a truthful manner the inner experiences of his soul in revelation.
In fact, it is closer to the truth to say that “the word of the messenger is the word
of the meaning of his Maker.”^^ There are other verses of the Qur’an that verify
this point: ‘This is a message sent down from the Lord of the world” (69:43).
This verse shows that what is intended by “the Word of the Messenger” is the
Word sent down to the Messenger by God. The reference of the ‘Word’ to the
Messenger shows that the Messenger’s duty was only to proclaim the revelation
of God exactly as he had received it. Otherwise, if it is accepted that the words
of Qur’an really belonged to the Messenger (Gabriel or the Prophet), the verse
would have said that “the Words of the honored Messenger were sent down by
God.” This, however, is not what the verse states; otherwise it would be a
contradiction. The second proof is the expressions following the
aforementioned verse that “And if the Messenger (Muhammad) were to invent
any saying in our name. We should certainly seize him by his right hand (the
right hand is the hand of power and action), and We should certainly then cut
off the artery of his heart” (S.69:44-46). Here, the use of words “taqawwal”
and “aqawil” which are derived from the root ‘q-w-l,’ emphatically refute that
the words of the Qur’an belong to the Prophet, to whom it was revealed.
Those who hold that the words of the Qur’an are those of the Prophet and
not part of the revelation are confronted with further contradictions. Since, the
term ‘Word’ is used as belonging to God in such verses as “Allah’s promise is
truth, and whose word can be Truer than Allah’s?” (4:122) and “Soon shall We
send down to thee a weighty Message” (75:5), it cannot be attributed to the
Prophet. These and other verses indicate that the use of the word ‘word’ in
relation to the Messengers (Gabriel and/or the Prophet Muhammad) is
metaphorical, emphasizing the role of the messenger as a channel for
transmitting the message. Therefore, the Qur’an is the Word of God that was
sent down by Allah. The trustworthy Angel Gabriel, after he had heard the
Qur’an from Allah, than revealed it to the Prophet Muhammad, who preserved
it faithfully, without any alteration, and then passed it on to mankind. Indeed,
“the Islamic tradition, taking its cue from the Qur’an has seen Muhammad as no
more than a mouthpiece, if a sentient and intelligent one Muhammad, then, is
the mediating agency in only the most attenuated sense.”^’
In section (b) above, the expression “Without doubt it is (announced) in the
revealed Books of former peoples” (S. 26:196) does not mean that the Qur’an
201 The Concept of Reveiation According to the Bibie and the Qur’an
in its present form, (text that includes meanings and wordings) had been part of As Ibn Taymiyyah states that to attribute the words and sentences of the 2. The Qur’an is Revealed in both Meaning and Words verses and their arguments can be discussed as follows: God in both meaning and words.”” Prophet Muhammad said that “My ummah b. Such verses as “(Allah) Most Gracious! It is He who has taught the c. Almighty God reminds us of what Ibn Mughira says: “This [Qur’an] is d. “We know indeed that they say: ‘It is a man that teaches him.’ The tongue e. In the verse, the expression “It is a man that teaches him” takes place and 202 of Academic Niyazi Beki Yil: 7, Sayi: 26 AQustos – Ekim 2005 (to teach) is used in both places. As meaning cannot be the only thing in While the teaching of men is rejected in the verse, how could the teaching of In conclusion, all these proofs indicate that the Qur’an is God’s miraculous Certainly, this should not be understood literally; it is a simile, a sign, an As Sayyid Qutb states, the miraculousness of the Qur’an is like the “(Allah) Most Gracious! It is He Who has taught the Qur’an.””^ “Verily this Since it is stated with incontrovertible proof that the Qur’an was revealed in 203 The Concept of Revelation According to the Bible and the Qur’§n which are about the revelation of the Qur’an, in a way, signify that the Qur’an Like al-Baqillani said, the following verses show that the Qur’an is a miracle As Mohatnmed Arkoun writes, “Revelation in the Qur’an is at first a result The Linguistic Meaning of the Word Qur’an of the word Qur’an. The most popular opinion is that the Word ‘Qur’an’ is an The word ‘Qur’an’ as a name of the Holy Book is also accepted to be either The Definition ofthe Qur’an There is no difference of opinion as to what the Qur’an is, but merely as to the 204 of Academic Niyazi Beki Yil: 7, Sayi: 26 AQustos – Ekim 2005 One of the more appropriate definitions is as follows:^^ “The Qur’an is the The Breakdown of the Definition unquestionably, that the Qur’an is in the Arabic language. There are several This, therefore, implies that a translation of the Qur’an into any other The next part of the definition reads “in word and meaning.” This part of the According to the majority of the scholars, this part of the definition also 205 The Concept of Revelation According to the Bible and the Qur’Sn down. There are thus a number of differences between hadith qudsi and the 1. The most important difference is that the Qur’an is revealed to the 2. The Qur’an is claimed to be a miracle that can never be imitated in its 3. Allah has promised to preserve the Qur’an; no such promise exists for the 4. The Qur’an has reached us in mutawatir (unanimous) chains of 5. It is an act of worship to recite the Qur’an, where this is not the case for Conclusion person of Jesus Christ in Christianity. In Christian theology, the Divine Logos A proper understanding of the concept of revelation in the three Abrahamic “After all these considerations, what have Christians to say about the 206 of Academic Niyazi Beki Yil: 7, Sayi: 26 AQustos – Ekim 2005 in this community has been on the whole satisfactory for the members. Many * Yrd. Dof.Dr. Sakarya Oniversitesi ilahiyat Fak. 207 The Concept of Revelation According to the Bible and the Qur’an See Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said, The Rays Collection, tr. Sukran Vahide (Istanbul: ^’ al-TirmizT Abu Isa Muhammad b. Isa, al-Jami al-Shih, al-Tefsir (Istanbul,1981), 16. ” al-Suyuti, Jalal al-din Abd al-Rahman, al-Itqln fi Ulum aI-Qur’an,(Beirut, n.d.), ^’ W. Montgomery Watt, tslam and Christianity today (London: Routledge & Kegan Dan Cohn-Sherbok (London: Macmillan, 1991), 46-7. ^’ Ibid,78.
^° al-Qattan, Manna, al-Mabahithft Ulum al-Qur’an (Beirut, 1991), 35. (Macmu, Beyrut, n.d.), IV, 350; al-Saawi, al-Shayh Ahmad, Hashiyah Ala al-Jalalayn, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibid. 208 of Academic Niyazi Beki Yil: 7, Sayi: 26 A^ustos – Ekim 2005
(Istanbul,1981), 8; al-Darimi, Abd Allah bin Abd al-Rahman al-Tamimi, Sunanu al- “‘ Sayyid Qufb, Fi Zilal al-Our’an. (Beirut, 1979) I, 38. ” see al-Zarqani, Ibid, I, 21; Qadhi, Abu Ammar, 25. 209 The Concept of Revelation According to the Bible and the Qur’an Abstract The main objective of this article is to investigate the meaning of provide a general background, t shall start with the concept of revelation in the The New Testament writers see revelation as the self-communication of the person ofthe Logos (the Word); it is the manifestation ofthe life and love of says and does.” Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” from God, usually through the agency ofthe archangel Gabriel, tt is and, in its definitive and final form, to the Prophet Muhammad.
Key Words: The Concept of Revelation, the Word of God. Judaism, Ozet Bu Makalenin amact, vahyin mahiyetinin ne oldugunu tespit etmeye Allah. Tevrat’i. Hz. Musa’ya bu ?ekilde (the word of God) vahyetmi^tir. ozaetlemek miimkiindiir. Allah’in digerpeygamberlere gondrdigi vahiy, hem Alldh onda tecelli etmi^tir. Islam alimlerinin gore ise, . Hz. Adem’den Hz. Vahyin mahiyetini yalmz mana olarak goren gok kuquk bir grubun diftnda, ibarettir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Vahy Kavramt, Allah’in Kelamt. Yahudilik, 210 of Academic Journal of World History, Vol. 25, Nos. 2 & 3 397
Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Philosophy sai bhatawadekar It is well known that G. W. F. Hegel sees in Christianity the greatest achievement of human religious thinking, the epitome of the con- Compared to other religions that Hegel discusses at length and 398 journal of world history, june/september 2014
historians of Europe it is also evident that Hegel’s appraisal of Islam is In his excellent work Ian Almond presents the complexities and 1 For a glimpse of this relationship, see the chapter “How Did Islam Make It into 2 Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Schol- 3 Franco Cardini, Europe and Islam, trans. Caroline Beamish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); 4 Michael Curtis, Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers on Oriental Despotism in the 5 Ian Almond, History of Islam in German Thought: From Leibniz to Nietzsche (New York: Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 399
sure to various sources, some of which (Johann Buhle, Edward Gibbon, Hegel’s selective assessment of Islam, then, is not due to shortage It is often repeated in secondary scholarship that Hegel called Islam 6 Almond, History of Islam, pp. 111–117. tives on Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion, ed. David Kolb (Albany: State University of New York 400 journal of world history, june/september 2014
three aspects to evaluate their philosophical worth in any civilization, My analysis is not simply, as Almond says, “a vulgarized version of Second, and most interesting, we will briefly look at two instances 8 Jean-Joseph Goux, “Untimely Islam: September 11th and the Philosophies of His- 9 Ibid., p. 56. was being praised for its “piety and abstemiousness” in contrast to the corruption of the 11 Goux, “Untimely Islam,” p. 58. Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 401
“awkward teenage phase.” These are not just philosophical musings or Triadic Dialectics
Triadic dialectics is, for Hegel, the fundamental and necessary struc- 13 Lauer explains that for Hegel “it simply was not true that the locus of concreteness 14 This process of Hegelian dialectic is often termed as the progression from thesis to 402 journal of world history, june/september 2014
concept develops itself 15: First it is only a concept, an idea—abstract Hegelian triadic movement is not merely a conceptual dialectic; it In Hegelian philosophy, Spirit is the idea and human civilizations 15 Walter Jaeschke, Hegel Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003) 16 Findlay explains the various “levels” on which Hegelian dialectic functions: “In Dia- Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 403
itself. If one studies a particular civilization—the emodiment of Spirit An abstract concept, its concretization in reality, and its fulfilment Triadic Dialectics of God and Religion
Religion and philosophy both are modes of Absolute Spirit’s self-cogni- 17 Dickey explains Hegel’s controversial correlation between religion and philosophy: 404 journal of world history, june/september 2014
on the former: “It is a central Hegelian doctrine that the true religion God, then, is simply a religious designation of Spirit. Hence, as However, this third moment is not simply a process of human con- this truth in a way that suits the advanced consciousness of the modern world. Dickey adds 18 Emil L. Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought (Bloomington: Indi- 19 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion I, ed. Peter C. Hodgson (Oxford: 20 Taylor quotes Hegel to explain the necessary dialectic development of God toward Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 405
that God is not an object merely reflected upon by man; God is not Hegel, as he revises his own philosophy of religion, applies his tri- The first part—“Der Begriff der Religion”—explores religion as an 21 Dale Schlitt, Divine Subjectivity: Understanding Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion (Scran- 22 Initially, in his 1821 lectures Hegel formulates the concept of religion in a more 23 Since God, as Spirit, is determined to go through the dialectic process and come to 406 journal of world history, june/september 2014
sciousness represents God in some form and envisions its own relation- The second part—“Die bestimmte Religion”—explains the con- This necessarily implies that the more ancient (and, for Hegel, also 24 Hegel, Philosophy of Religion I, p. 443. Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 407
and Egyptian religions and advances to more developed stages of Greek Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Islam
The leading features of Mahometanism involve this—that in actual This paragraph stems from Hegel’s subchapter “Mahometanism” in his 25 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Kitchener, Ont.: Batoche 408 journal of world history, june/september 2014
to have contributed much to the development of philosophy. The 26 I found this interesting yet problematic statement, which, although at the end would Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 409
existence have no real grounding or worth as it is obliterated in the Divine Universality: God as “the One” Divine Universal Absolute Being
To be sure, Hegel is impressed with the idea that Allah is truly “the God in Islam is truly a pure universality, without any representation, Describing Allah as the unconditioned, pure, divine universality 27 Hegel, Consummate Religion III, pp. 242–243. 410 journal of world history, june/september 2014
quality of Spirit,”29 and elsewhere adds, “In it Christianity finds its “This One has indeed, the quality of Spirit,” says Hegel and adds, 29 Ibid., p. 373. Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 411
One, subjectivity fails to meaningfully function as its concretization, Human Concreteness: Its Status, Function, and Relationship “The relationship [is that] of the servant to a Lord; the fear of the Lord In Islam, then, God is the Lord, and the only occupation of human- All Abrahamic faiths—Christianity and Judaism as much as Islam— 34 Hegel, Determinate Religion II, p. 156. Islamic Studies Series (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 1–2. 412 journal of world history, june/september 2014
“Now the fear of the Lord,” says Hegel in his Logic, “is, doubtless, Everything may just as well be something else as what it is, and there is The religious analysis is conceptually connected to a society’s 37 G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Logic, trans. William Wallace, p. 264, available at Marx- 38 G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, available at Marxists In- Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 413
Hegel, the unsophisticated “idea” of Islam manifests itself in a socio- The only—absolutely only—real content of human subjectivity, of The antithesis consists in the fact that in Christianity spirituality is 39 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 374. 414 journal of world history, june/september 2014
history . . . The religion of Islam, by contrast, hates and proscribes In effect, for Hegel there are three fundamental reasons embedded These “fanatical” aspects are a clear indication for Hegel that The fundamental flaw of Islam, according to Hegel, is its complete 43 Hegel, Consummate Religion III, p. 243. Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 415
that aims to end the specificity of human life in order to obliterate con- Lack of Sublation between Man and God
To begin with, if God is not properly self-determining, man is not free In response to this, one immediate question that was asked by the 45 Hegel, Determinate Religion II, p. 158. 416 journal of world history, june/september 2014
with God not sought and achieved? Is the individual not free, in the The answer, of course, is no. There is evidence that Hegel read [O]riental pantheism is elaborated in Mohammedanism more particu- As is well known, the controversial Pantheismusstreit between 47 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, vol. 2, trans. F. P. B. Osmaston (London: 48 Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art, pp. 89–95. Klas Grinell, “Hegel Reading Rumi: The 49 Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art, pp. 92–93. Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 417
pantheism to the forefront of philosophical discussions in Germany.50 If Hegel were to comment on Sufism in his philosophy of religion, 50 Daniel Dahlstrom, “Moses Mendelssohn,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 51 Jaeschke, “Philosophical Theology and Philosophy of Religion,” pp. 1–18. Also see 52 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 373. 418 journal of world history, june/september 2014
the two.53 However, the author does mention that for Rumi God is a The Rumi type of aesthetic spirituality belongs, for Hegel, in the So Islam is not a perfect embodiment of Spirit. But how does one Conclusion
We have unfolded both approaches at once in the above triadic analy- 53 Naim Şahin, “Der Vergleich einiger Metaphysischer Begriffe Zwischen Mewlâ Na 54 Ibid., p. 774. in the Debate on the Place of India within the History of Philosophy,” in Hegel’s History of 56 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 377. Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 419
cal.57 That is to say, in Gadamer’s terms, we have explained Hegel’s On the critical hand, his foregone predetermined conclusion, his 57 Bradley Herling, “Either a Hermeneutical Consciousness or a Critical Consciousness: 58 Hegel, Philosophy of History, pp. 452, 377. 420 journal of world history, june/september 2014
appear in comparison to other religions, to Judaism and Christianity in Bringing hermeneutic and critical consciousnesses in conversation It is in this regard that I think the following examples of applied Zizek opens his article acknowledging that to Western historians 60 Slavoj Zizek, “A Glance into the Archives of Islam,” http://www.lacan.com/ 61 “Actual Democalypse 2012,” The Daily Show, http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/ Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 421
ity, and Islam could embody the triad of Hegelian dialectic develop- Judaism is the religion of genealogy, of succession of generations; Judaism is bound by a genealogy and hence to a community; Chris- 62 Zizek, “Archives of Islam,” http://www.lacan.com/zizarchives.htm. 422 journal of world history, june/september 2014
Islam’s young age, Zizek’s argument, of course, completely destroys Whereas Zizek proposes to observe the triadic concept of religion In this context of applied Hegelianism, Goux’s words are aptly What makes current events enigmatic is that they are the conse- 63 “Actual Democalypse 2012.” Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 423
is that accelerated globalization . . . no longer allows civilizations in While Zizek’s interpretation is more philosophical, academic, and Hegel would be equipped, mind you, if he were to be presented with This exploration is absolutely crucial, for while it may be inter- 64 Goux, “Untimely Islam,” pp. 55, 68. 424 journal of world history, june/september 2014
as we experience it today, it is also rather obvious that the idea of a 66 Marchand, German Orientalism, p. 188. in Europe 1, no. 1 (2008): 3–33. Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 92. Copyright of Journal of World History is the property of University of Hawaii Press and its
Ai
the revealed Books of former peoples. On the contrary, it indicates that the
Qur’an was announced by name, or its fundamental characteristics were
described, in the revealed Books of former peoples.^’ As well as that, the
expression “Those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet, whom
they fmd mentioned in their own (Scriptures), in the Law and the Gospel”
(7:157) do not mean that the Prophet Muhammad as a person has been
mentioned in the old Scriptures. Some people attribute this view to Abu
Hanifah (d.l50 A.H.), the founder of the Hanafi school of Law^^ But Abu
Hanifa points out in his Fiqh al-Akbar that “The Qur’an is the word {kalam) of
Allah, written in the Mushaf, preserved in the hearts, recited by the tongues, and
revealed to the Prophet”.^’
Qur’an to the Prophet does not make sense, because what is meant by the word
refers consistently to the Word of God, not to the Prophet.””^
The proponents of this view base their claims on a number of Qur’anic
a. The majority of Muslim scholars accept that the Qur’an is the word of
does not agree upon error.””*^ According to this hadith, the consensus of the
majority of the scholars proves that it is true.
Qur’an” (55:1-2) explain that the Qur’an was taught by God. The first word of
the Quranic revelation is ‘Iqra’, which means ‘read’ or ‘recite’. This indicates
that the Qur’an was in fact sent down as a Book. To further clarify these points,
I shall discuss briefly some definitions of the Qur’an.
nothing but man’s word (74:25).” To show that this declaration is false, and that
its speaker deserves punishment. Almighty God says: “Soon will I cast him into
Hell-fire (74:26).” This proves that the Qur’an is not the word of any human
being, including Muhammad (pbuh).
of him they wickedly point to is notably foreign, while this is Arabic, pure and
clear” (16: 103). In this verse, there are several points that show that the Qur’an
consists of both language and meaning.
is rejected off first hand. It is impossible to think that this teaching is only
formed of meaning. And there is no such a usage. When we compare this
expression to ‘The Most Gracious has taught the Qur’an” (55:1-2), we see that
one of the elements of the Qur’an is its language. It is because the word “ta ‘iTm”
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teaching humankind, the Gracious God’s teaching will also be in language.
the Prophet, who is also a man, be allowed? In the expression “The tongue of
him they wickedly point to is notably foreign, while this is Arabic, pure and
clear,” the word “Lisan” (tongue) is used both for the man and the Qur’an. In
common usage of all people, the word “tongue” is used for the combination of
meaning and language. Meanings are neither Arabic nor another language; only
after clothed in words do they find expression in language. According to this, in
the verse, the term “tongue,” or “language”, which is used both for a person and
the Qur’an, is in the known meaning and expresses the word order.
word, which comes from infinite divine wisdom, and has infinite meanings in an
unmatchable word order. From beginning to end, it is the utterance of God,
letter by letter. Neither Gabriel nor Muhammad (pbuh) interfered in it.
Almighty God, in order to relay his commands to his servants and make those
orders understandable, stated his words according to his “internal speech”
(Kaldm-i Nafsi) :’*^ In the same way, we people, express our ideas, our “internal
speech” in a certain word order to make them understandable.’*”
approximation to assist in understanding what is beyond human ken.
miraculousness of the universe. When a person holds a piece of earth that
contains several elements, he can form a brick, a pot, a column, or similar
things from it. God, however, creates animate beings with beating hearts and
pulses from the same earth. The Qur’an’s situation is not different from this.
When people use words and letters, a normal statement, or a rhyming
expression is formed. But, with the words and letters God uses, the miraculous
Furqan, the Qur’an, is manifested. To make this fact obvious, the Qur’an
challenges its opponents by sometimes wanting them to produce the like of the
Qur’an, the like of ten of its chapters, or the like of one of its chapters.”‘
is a Revelation from the Lord of the Worlds: With it came down the Spirit of
Faith and Truth (Gabriel) -To your heart and mind, that you may admonish in
the perspicuous Arabic tongue.””^ “As to you (My messenger), the Qur’an is
bestowed upon you from the presence of One Who is Wise and All-
Knowing.””* “By the Book that makes things clear -We have made it Qur’an in
Arabic, that you may be able to understand (and learn wisdom).”‘” These verses
point out the fact that the Qur’an was revealed by God with its language.
Arabic, the word “tanzil”, which represents the revelation of the Qur’an, is
chosen to stand for both the meaning and words. Thus, verses like “The
revelation of this Book is from Allah, the Exalted in Power, Full of Wisdom,”^”
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was revealed both with its meaning and its language, as a whole, by Almighty
God.
with its versification:” “Yet they say: ‘Why are not Signs sent down to him
from his Lord?’ Say: ‘The Signs are indeed with Allah: and I am indeed a clear
Warner.’ And is it not enough for them that We have sent down to you the Book
Which is rehearsed to them? Verily, in it is mercy and a reminder to those who
believe.”^•^
of linguistic evidence: the syntactic, semantic, semiotic structure ofthe Qur’anic
discourse imposes a space of communication totally articulated to impose a
notion and a content of Revelation.”^^ All the above points clearly indicate that
the Qur’an is from God both with regard to its meaning and its language.
Otherwise, the miraculous eloquence and clarity, which are claimed to be in
every chapter ofthe Qur’an, would not be evident.
There are a number of different opinions concerning the linguistic meaning
infinitive, its pattern is ‘fu’Ian’ like ‘gufran-shukran’. It is from the root ‘q-r-a’
which means ‘to read-to recite’ or from the root ‘q-r-n’ which means to collect,
to join and to associate. Allah says in reference to the Qur’an that “Move not
thy tongue concerning the (Qur’an) to make haste therewith. It is for Us to
collect it and to promulgate it; but when We have promulgated it, follow thou
its recital (as promulgate) (S.75:16-18). On the other hand. Imam al-Shafi’i
(d.2O4 A.H.) held the view that the word ‘Qur’an’ was a proper noun that was
not derived from any word, like the words ‘Tawrah’ (Torah) and ‘Injil’
(Bible).^*
a form of a passive participle, which means “the Book that is read”, and so as
form subject, which means ‘the Collector Book’. It means that the Qur’an
includes different chapters and verses, and different knowledge of the Old
Scriptures.’^ The Qur’an is named ‘Qur’an’ because it is ‘read by humans’, and
is named ‘the book’ because it is ‘written in ink’.’^
There are many definitions of the Qur’an, which differ in wording only.
best way to define it. A good definition must include everything that is
essential, exclude everything that is extraneous, and be as succinct as possible.
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Arabic Speech {kalam) of Allah, which He revealed to Muhammad (phup) in
words and meaning, and which has been preserved in the Mushafs, and has
reached us by mutawatir transmissions, and is a challenge to mankind to
produce something similar to it”.’*
The statement in the definition, “The Qur’an is the Arabic” states,
verses pointing to this point. For instance, Allah says that “We have sent it
down as an Arabic Qur’an, in order that you may learn wisdom” (S. 12:2) and
“A revelation from (Allah), Most Gracious, Most Merciful. A Book, whereof
the verses are explained in detail, a Qur’an in Arabic, for people who
understand” (S. 41:2-3).”
language will not be the Qur’an itself. Imam al-Zarkashi says that “the Qur’an
has been revealed in the Arabic language. Therefore, it is impermissible to
recite it in any other language.”^” The next part of the definition states that God
revealed the Qur’an to Muhammad (pbuh). This excludes any ‘speech’ {kalam)
that He spoke to prophets other than Muhammad (pbuh). For instance, Allah
spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai. Hence the title of Moses in Muslim theology is
kalim Allah, that is, the one to whom Allah spoke. Allah says that “and to
Moses Allah spoke direct” (S.4:164). The Qur’an mentions specifically the
revelation sent down to the Prophet. For instance God says that “if one amongst
the pagans asks you for asylum, grant it to him, so that he may hear the Word of
Allah; and then escort him to where he can be secure” (S.9:6). And also, “And
truly this Qur’an is a revelation from the Lord ofthe worlds. With it came down
the Spirit of Faith and truth. To your heart and mind (O Muhammad), so that
you may be one of the Warners” (26:192-4).
definition affirms that the words of the Qur’an are from Allah, and not from
Gabriel or even Muhammad (pbuh). Ibn Taymiyyah said “the majority of
Islamic scholars agree that the Qur’an is the speech of Allah in Meaning and
Words.”^’
excludes hadith qudsi, the sacred sayings of the Prophet because hadith qudsi
are only inspired in meaning, while their words are from the Prophet. For
instance. The Prophet (pbuh) said that “Allah said that ‘O my servants, I have
made injustice haram (forbidden) for Me, and have made it haram between you
also, so do not be unjust to one another”.*^ It is thus clear that the Prophet
Muhammad distinguished between the Qur’an and his own speech including the
hadith qudsi in his lifetime. As we know from history, when the chapters of the
Qur’an were sent down to him, he asked his scribes {kuttab) to write them
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Qur’an:
Prophet from Allah in meaning and words.
style, prose or content. The Qur’an challenges pagan Arabs and, by extension,
anyone who does nol believe in it, to produce something similar or equivalent to
it. A hadith qudsi, however, has no miraculous nature.
sacred sayings of the Prophet.
narration. But the haidth qudsi exists mainly in the form of ahad hadith, i.e., the
type of hadith that has been narrated from single individuals and sources.
hadith qudsi. In other words, it is only the Qur’an that can be recited in
prayers.*”
The importance of the Qur’an in Islam is similar to the importance of the
became man. In Islam, God’s Word became text.^ The language of the Qur’an
is poetic, and the Qur’an introduced a new form of poetic speech. In having said
that, the Qur’an is not poetry. As Taha Hussein put it, it is neither poetry nor
prose, it is the Qur’an.*’
traditions is an important step towards overcoming some long-standing
obstacles that separate these traditions from one another. As we now realize,
there is more held in common between the faith traditions than is not. I end with
a quote firom Montgomery Watt, a prominent scholar of Islam and an important
Christian theologian who has made substantial contributions to Muslim-
Christian understanding:
prophethood of Muhammad? For Muslims, Jesus is a prophet and is indeed
something more than a prophet, since the Qur’an (4.171) speaks of him as
‘God’s word which he put into Mary and a spirit from him’. For Christians the
question of Muhatnmad’s prophethood is difficult, especially with the
continuing infiuence in some minds of the medieval caricatures. In the light of
the above discussions the following seem to be the salient points. Muhammad,
claimed to receive messages from God and conveyed these to his
contemporaries. On the basis of these messages a religious community
developed, claiming to serve God, numbering some thousands in Muhammad’s
lifetime, and now having several hundred million members. The quality of life
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men and women in this community have attained to saintliness of life, and
countless ordinary people have been enabled to live decent and moderately
happy lives in ‘difficult circumstances. These points lead to the conclusion that
the view of reality presented in the Qur’an is true and from God, and that
Muhammad is therefore a genuine prophet.**
‘ Issa J. Boullata. “Fa-stabiqu ‘l-khayrat: A Qur’anic Principle of Interfaith Relations.
Christian-Muslim Encounters. Eds. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Wadi Z. Haddad.
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995). 43-53.
^ Ausaf Ali, “The Concept of Revelation and Implications for Theological Ethics in
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” ttamdard tslamicus, 20|3, (1997), 23.
^ Johannes Deninger. “Revelation” Encyclopedia of Religion. (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1995), XII, 356.
” Ibid.
‘ Encounters with Eternity, eds., Christopher Jay Johnson, and Marsha G. McGee, (
New York, 1986), 206-208.
* Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man (New York: The Jewish Publication
Society of America, 1956),185.
‘ Ibid, 188.
* The Encyclopedia of Religion, (New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1995), XII,
360.
‘ Subhi al-Salih, Mabahith ft ulum al-Qur’dn, Beirut, 1990, p.25. Quoted from the
(Qamus kitab al-Muqaddas, Beirut, 1894).
‘” Paul Edwards, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Macmillan Company & the free
press, (New York, 1967), 189.
“Ibid.
‘̂ Walter M. Abbott- General Editor, The Documents of Vatican tt, translation Editor,
Very Rev. Msgr. Joseph Gallagher,( New York, 1966), 108.
‘̂ The Sixteen Documents of Vatican tl. Commentaries by the Council Fathers,
Compiled by Rev. J. L. Gonzalez, S.S.P. and the Daughters of St. Paul. Index compiled
by Rev. Charles Dollen (Boston, n. d.), 376.
”’ Richard Bauckham, “Jesus the Revelation of God” in Divine Revelation, edited by
Paul Avis, (London: 1997), 175-180.
‘̂ Zaki Yaqub, “The Concept of Revelation in Islam.” Islamic Quarterly, 27|2, (1983),
72.
‘* The Encyclopedia oJ Religion, volume twelve (New York, 1995), 361.
Akademik
Ara5tirmalar
Dergisi
sozler Publications, 1998), 147-149.
‘* Ibid.
” Ibid.
^̂ al-Buhkaii, Muhammad ibn Ismail, Sahih al-Buhari, Fadail al-Sahabe
(Istanbul,1981), 6; Muslim ibn Hajjaj al-Qushayri^ Sahih Muslim, Fadail al-Sahabe
(Istanbul,1981), 23.
V.I,.59; al-Jami’ al-Sagir,(Beinit, n. d.) v.1,155; al-AjlQni, Ismail b. Muhammad, Kashf
al-Khafa (Beirut, 1352), 1,231.
‘̂’ See al-Taftz§ni, MasM ibn U’mar, Sharh al-Maqasid (Cairo, n.d.), 189-190
Paul, 1983), 58.
*̂ Zaki Yaqub, “The Qur’an and Revelation.” Islam in a World of Diverse Faiths, ed.
^’ Qadhi Ebu Ammar, Yasir, An tntroduction to the Sciences ofthe Qur’an (Birmigham:
Al-Hidaye Publishing and Distribution, 1999), 76.
*̂ Ibid, .76.
. ” al-Zarqani, Muhammad Abd al-Azim, Menahil al-Irfan fi Ulum al-Qur’an
(Beirut,1988), I, 49.
^̂ al-Zarqani, Ibid; al-Qattan, Ibid, 36.
•̂’ al-Hazin, Ala al-din Ali bin Muhammad, Lubab al-Ta’wil fi Maan al-tanzil in the
(al-Maktaba al-Islamiyya, n.p.;n.d), IV, 243-4.
•”’ al-Sarahsi, Shams aldin, al-Mabsut, (Beirut, 1993), I, 37; Ibn Taytmyyah, Ahmad b.
Abd al-Halim, al-Fatawa al-Kubra, ( Beirut, n.d), V, 144; al-Zarqani, Ibid, 50.
” Elmalili Muhammad Hamdi Yazir, Hak Dini Qur’an Dili, (Istanbul, 1971), VIII, 324.
‘* Shabbir Akhtar. “An Islamic Model of Revelation.” Islam and Christian-Muslim
Relations, (1991), 11,97.
^̂ al-Alusi al-Sayyid Muhammad al-Baghdadi, Ruh al- Maani fi Tafsir al-Qur’an al-
Azim wa al- Sab’ al- Mathani, (Beyrut, n.d)XIX, 125-126.
^’a/- Fiqh al-Akbar, 301, quoted from Qadhi Abu Ammar, Ibid,36.
^Ibid, 149-150.
“‘ Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibid., 146.
•”̂ Ibn Majah, Muhammad bin Yazid al-Qazwini, al-Sunan, Kitab al-Fitan
Journal
Studies
Darimi, al-Muqaddima (Istanbul,1981), 8.
*^ al-Zarqani, Ibid.
^Ibid.
“^Qur’an 55:1-2.
•*’Qur’an 26:192-195.
‘^ Qur’an 27:6.
“‘Qur’an 43:2-3.
‘° Qur’an 39:1
” See, al-Baqillani, al-Qadhi Abu Bekr, t’jaz al-Qur’an, II, 239-240.
” Q u r ‘ a n 29:50-51
” Mohammed Arkoun “The Notion of Revelation.” Die Welt Des Islams, 28, (1988),
67.
‘•* al-Alflsi, Ibid, 8; Qadhi Ebu Ammar, Ibid, 24.
” See al-Raghib al-Asphah§ni, Mufradat Alfaz al-Qur’an ( Beirut, 1992), ‘q-r-a’ ; al-
Alusi, Ibid.
‘* al-Diraz, Muhammad Abd Allah^ al-Naba’ al-Azim, tr. Suad Yildirim (Izmir,1994),
3.
^̂ al-Zarqani, Ibid, 22; Diraz, Ibid,5; Cerrahoglu, Ismail, Tefsir Usulu_{Ankaiii,l919),
34.
” Abdullah Said. Rethinking ‘Revelation’ as a Precondition for Reinterpreting the
Qur’an: A Qur’anic Perspective. Joumai of Qur’anic Studies. N.d. 102.
* al-Zarkashi, Badr al-din Muhammad b. Abd Allah, al-Burhan ft ulum al-Qur’an,
(Beirut, al-Maktabah al-‘Asriyyah, 1972), I, 287.
*’ Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibid, IV, 146.
‘^ Reported by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj al-Qushayri, Sahih al- Muslim, Kitab al-Birr wa
al-slat we al-adab, (Cairo: Maktaba Muhammad Ali Sabiyh, n.d.), VIII, 17.
” Qadhi Abu Ammar, 72-74.
‘^ Stefan Wild, ” Spatial and Temporal Implications ofthe Qur’anic Concepts of Nuzill,
Tanzil and Inzai,” in The Qur’an as Text (New York: KOln, 1996), 137.
*’ Navid Kermani, “Revelation in its Aesthetic Dimension”, in “The Qur’an as Text,”
edited by Stefan Wild Leiden,( New York: Koln, 1996), 221.
** Ibid, 60-61.
Ai
The Concept of Revelation According to the Bihle And The Qur’an
revelation in the Bible and the Qur’an. My basic question can be formulated
as follows: Can the authenticity of revelation as a sacred text be established
through its (verbatim) words, or through its meaning, or through both? To
Judaism, Christianity, and tslam.
God in and through Jesus Christ. “Revelation is therefore given together with
God. Because Jesus is the only-begotten Son, he reveals the Father in what he
tslam’s understanding of revelation is that, Wahy. or revelation, comes
unanimously accepted by Muslim scholars that revelation is given to prophets
Christianity, tslam, the Bible, The Qur’an
Kitab-I Mukaddes ve Kur’an-i Kerime Gore Vahy Kavrami
yoneliktir. Ara^ttrrtamtzda ?u sorulara cevap aranacakttr: Vahyin mahiyeti,
yalmz mana mtdtr. yoksa sadece lafiz mtdtr yahut her ikisinin toplamtndan mi
ibarettir? Konu, Kitab-t Mukaddes ve Kur’an-t kerim tftgtnda ele alinmt^tir.
Yahudilere gore, vahyin mahiyeti. hem lafiz hem de mana olarak Allah ‘a aittir.
titristiyanlartn gorii^leri farkliltk arzetmekle beraber genel olarak §dyle
lafiz hem de manadan ibarettir. Ancak tiz. Isa ‘nin kendisi cismani bir vahydir;
Muhammed’e kadar gelen butUn vahyler, Allah’in kelmt (the word of God)dir.
tslam alimlerinin ezici gogunluguna gore, vahiy. hem laftz hem de manadan
Hiristiyanlik. Islam. Kitab-iMukaddes, Kur’an-i Kerim
Journal
Studies
© 2014 by University of Hawai‘i Press
of Religion
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
cept of religion, and the fulfillment of God himself. In Christianity,
Hegel argues, the idea of God is perfectly postulated; a real, tangible
connection is established between divinity and humanity in the form
of the Son of God; and human consciousness continually strives to
elevate its finiteness to divine infinity. In Hegel’s scheme, compared
to Christianity all other world religions are flawed, lacking, and unso-
phisticated in theory and practice. Islam, for Hegel, is no exception: It
is a religion of fanaticism. God, indeed, is a universal divine absolute,
but man has no other function than to be subservient to God, to be a
believer, and to die for his faith. Unlike Christianity, neither is a mean-
ingful bond created between God and man, nor is the finite humanity
truly raised to be one with the divine.
depth in his works, placing them in the trajectory of developmental
stages of world religions, Islam gets very little attention from Hegel. In
his Philosophy of History “Mohametanism” is limited to but a small sub-
chapter within his discussion of “the Germanic world,” in the History
of Philosophy “Arabian philosophy” is considered not contributive at all
to the development of philosophy, and Islam finds a few scattered men-
tions in the Encyclopedia and in the three parts of Hegel’s Lectures on
the Philosophy of Religion. That Hegel was Eurocentric is as clear as day,
and that he called Islam a “fanatic” religion is also not unknown. To
deeply rooted in Europe’s complicated relationship with the Ottoman
Empire.1 Suzanne Marchand reminds us that early modern Europeans,
some of whom praised the Prophet, the piety of the Muslims, and the
nomadic wandering Arabs, still largely lived in immediate fear of the
Ottoman Empire and, by association, of Islam; criticized its brutality,
superstition, and polygamy; and had to keep convincing themselves
of the superiority of Christianity.2 We have comprehensive and mul-
tifaceted histories of European and specifically German engagement
with Islam in Franco Cardini’s Europe and Islam, for example, or Nina
Berman’s German Literature on the Middle East: Discourses and Prac-
tices, 1000–1989.3 Michael Curtis gives a concise account of Europe’s
encounter with Muslim forces since the seventh century, a multifac-
eted history in which the political, military, and economic aspects were
inseparable from religion. They included territorial and terrible con-
quests; trade of perfumes and weapons; constant calls for two centuries
from the popes, culminating in the crusades, to protect Christians and
the Holy Land from the Muslim “race utterly alienated from God”;
the glorious feats of the Ottoman Empire and its control of the Medi-
terranean and beyond; Europe’s internal conflicts; and French diplo-
matic alliances with Turkey against the Habsburgs, until the defeats
and retreats of the Ottomans from the end of the seventeenth century
well into the early nineteenth.4
motivations of Hegel’s understanding of Islam in the context of his
response to Kant, his bourgeois social and academic status, ideas on
race and religion, and his aesthetic appreciation of Persian literature
and poetry.5 Hegel’s assertions on everything Islamic were not monoto-
nously derisive; they oscillated between appreciation and criticism, and
so did his sources. Almond gives a concise account of Hegel’s expo-
Hegel’s Philosophy of World History?” in Mohammad R. Salama, Islam, Orientalism, and
Intellectual History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 103–122.
arship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 25–26.
Nina Berman, German Literature on the Middle East: Discourses and Practices, 1000–1989
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011).
Middle East and India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 18–30.
Routledge, 2010), pp. 108–134.
various articles in the Edinburgh Review) described Muslims as barbaric,
monstrous, and fanatic, but others (Johannes von Müller, Charles de
Peyssonel) praised Ottoman Turkey as a great illustrious nation with
spiritual, intelligent, witty, and heroic people. As the editor of Bam-
berger Zeitung (1807–1808) during the time Turkey was seeking French
assistance to introduce Western modernizing reforms in the empire,
Hegel allowed detailed and expansive coverage of the Ottoman world in
the newspaper, which included both critical and sympathetic reports.6
of information, but it is also not lacking in philosophical reflection.
While we should keep the historical backdrop in mind to understand
Hegel’s famous remarks about Islam’s terrible power and its eventual
disappearace from the stage of history, we should also remember the
philosophical battles Hegel was engaged in to understand his concep-
tual analysis of Islam. He rejected German Romantic glorification of
the East for mysticism and spiritual rebirth in the same breath as he
criticized Kant’s limits of knowledge and rational thinking. He sys-
tematized a philosophy that declared reason as the all-encompassing
principle and Spirit as the self-determining universality on a higher,
more self-aware level than religion, but at the same time (in the wake
of the famous Pantheismusstreit between Jacobi and Mendelssohn), he
defended speculative thought against charges of pantheism and atheism.
Hegel refused to reduce God to a mere subjective feeling or banish him
outside of reason. Thought was infinite and was able to conceive and
articulate God, and the Christian faith was the only religion of reason.7
“fanatic,” and that he described Allah as the pure abstract oneness.
How he philosophically justified those statements, how the tenets
of his philosophy of religion provided him the tools and vocabulary,
and how it dictated his interpretation of Islam are not clearly parsed.
I place Hegel’s assessment of Islam in the tripartite framework of his
dialectic as he applies it to the concepts of God and religion. In Hege-
lian thought, as we all know, triadic dialectics is the necessary struc-
ture of all concepts and ideas, yes, of reality itself as it progressively
unfolds in human thought. For God and religion too, Hegel seeks
7 Walter Jaeschke, “Philosophical Theology and Philosophy of Religion,” New Perspec-
Press, 1992), pp. 1–18.
namely (1) how the abstract divine concept—God—is conceived, (2)
how finite human particularity functions, and (3) if and how the latter
reconciles with the former. Moreover, in the linear, progressive, and
teleological scheme of history in Hegel’s philosophy, the more Eastern
and ancient a religion is, the more primitive and flawed it is, and the
more Western and younger, the more evolved it is, until the trajec-
tory culminates into the perfection of Christianity. In this vision, to
put it simply in Goux’s words, Islam is “untimely” and it “puts Hegel
in a very awkward position.”8 Islam is both Eastern and modern, and
as such “this could seem like a violent offense to chronology, a kind
of outrageous anomaly.”9 As it arrives later than Christianity, it can
potentially qualify for being more evolved than Christianity or, at least,
somehow instrumental in facilitating the advancement from Catholi-
cism to Protestantism.10 Either way, this would challenge the very core
of Hegel’s philosophy of religion. We will see with what “speculative
sleight of hand” Hegel argues Islam’s imperfections despite its temporal
placement after Christianity.11
Hegel, stuffed full of ‘End of History’ and ‘Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis
cliches.’”12 It is an attempt, first, to bring together two sides of the
interpretive spectrum—Gadamerian hermeneutics and Orientalist/
postcolonial protest. That is to say, on the one hand, it is an attempt
in intellectual history to understand (not defend, but clarify) Hegel’s
philosophical “horizon” that filtered his understanding of Islam, and,
on the other hand, it is an attempt to reveal how he imposed criteria
and structure that confined and judged Islam, to expose his compulsive
repetition of the same criticism, with which he brushed off Kant, Hin-
duism, Buddhism, Pantheism, and Islam alike!
as an application of Hegelian ideas to Islam: Zizek’s comment propos-
ing Judaism-Christianity-Islam as a progressive dialectic triad in its
own right, and John Oliver’s hilarious explanation on The Daily Show
of the different “ages” of religions and in particular Islam’s current
tory,” SubStance 115 (2008): 56.
10 As Marchand briefly states, in the debates between Catholics and Protestants, Islam
Roman Catholics. Marchand, German Orientalism, p. 25.
12 Almond, History of Islam, p. 111.
a spicy attempt to connect German idealism with American popular
culture. It is a demonstration of subversion from within Hegel’s system
and a new direction in which hermeneutics and critique of Orientalism
can move forward: It is easy, on the one hand, to fault Hegel’s Euro-
centrism from today’s perspective or, on the other hand, to excuse it
with his own hermeneutic horizon, explaining that he could not have
interpreted Islam any other way given his philosophical and historical
situatedness. The exciting part is that Zizek and Oliver show that even
from within his system, using his own paradigm and measures, Islam
could have a different face in his philosophy that would subvert his
core and end goal. There is a real encounter here between West and
East, self and the other: It is not just a simple Orientalist scene, where
Hegel, the quintessential Western observer, imposes a derogatory defi-
nition on a passive voiceless East; from within his system, playing by
his rules, the East has agency here to shake him loose.
ture of reality as it progressively reveals itself in and through thought13:
First, thought establishes an entity or a concept (“being,” for example);
second, it proceeds to posit its negation (“nothing”), without which
the first entity cannot be comprehended. The contradiction between
the concept and its negation is sublated or aufgehoben in an elevated
state of their resolution (“becoming”), which at once includes and yet
overcomes the difference between the entity and its negation.14 The
dialectical movement is not simply the process of human consciousness
comprehending a concept, but rather a movement through which the
was in the immediacy of reality’s presence to sensation . . . reality was more concretely pres-
ent (more real) in thought, in ideas.” Lauer states further that the “totality of reality” itself
is its “progressively concrete manifestation” into thought. “[T]his involves a realization that
man will find the very reality of reality only in the awareness of reality which is at the same
time reality’s progressive self-manifestation.” Lauer summarizes this correlation of reality
and thought by stating that “Hegel’s system is his Logic, which penetrates thought and finds
in it the revelation of reality.” Quentin Lauer, Hegel’s Idea of Philosophy (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1971), pp. 2–3.
antithesis to synthesis; however, as Findlay points out, Hegel himself rarely employs these
terms. Findlay states that these terms are more characteristic of Fichte than Hegel. J. N.
Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 70.
and implicit. It then, in the second moment, has to negate its abstract-
ness and become concrete in reality, in human thought and life, in
society and history—that is, it manifests and actualizes itself in its par-
ticularity. Finally, in the third moment, the concept relates to itself,
completely cognizes itself in a higher synthesis of its Begriff (abstract
idea) and its Bestimmtheit (concrete manifestation).16
encompasses the entire temporal dimension—namely, the entirety of
human history. A concept concretizes and develops itself through time,
through history, in progressively more self-aware stages, advancing
toward the concept’s complete fulfillment. The initial implicit idea,
which is not quite self-aware, actualizes itself first in an imperfect, con-
fused first draft with many loose ends, then revises itself several times
in progressively better formulations, until it arrives at a final draft, in
which the once implicit idea is fully developed and perfectly stream-
lined. This necessarily implies a linear teleological progress of history,
suggesting that the earlier stages of history embody the concept only in
an imperfect and primitive manner, and each next step is more evolved
than all the previous ones.
are its drafts, its concrete manifestation in various stages. Through
their phases in history Spirit actualizes itself until it reaches perfec-
tion and complete self-cognition as Absolute Spirit. Hegel introduces
a remarkable vision of the world that proposes that the entire human
history, the development of human thought, its concrete manifestation
in art, religion, and philosophy are actually the Geist getting to know
p. 231. Hegel explains that the threefold structure is “immer der Gang in aller Wissenschaft:
zuerst der Begriff, dann die Bestimmtheit des Begriffs, die Realität, Objektivität und endlich
dies, daß der erste Begriff sich selbst Gegenstand ist, für sich selbst ist, sich selbst gegen-
ständlich wird, sich zu sich selbst verhält.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen:
Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte, vol. 5 (Hamburg: Meiner, 1983–), p. 177.
lectic one-sided abstractions demand to be complemented by alternative abstractions, which
are often as much antithetical as complementary . . . At higher stages, however, Dialectic
becomes a reflective shuttling to and fro between notions known to be interdependent and
correlative, and at a yet higher level it becomes a simple development of our notions, the
more narrowly abstract merely growing into the more ‘concrete’ or rich in ‘sides.’ In all these
processes contradiction is most evident: it is implicitly present in the original products of
Understanding, it becomes explicit when these products break down, and start passing into
their complements, or being referred to their correlatives, or growing into more ‘concrete’
forms, and it is ‘preserved’ in the result of all such processes.” Findlay, Re-examination, p. 63.
at a given stage—then its social and political institutions and struc-
ture, its aesthetic, spiritual, and philosophical vision, would reveal to
what extent they are truly rational and free—that is, to what extent the
Spirit is self-aware. The world, in other words, is a progressive teleo-
logically developing actualization of the Spirit’s journey toward com-
plete self-cognition. Art, religion, and philosophy are modes of human
consciousness and activity, and they function as vehicles for Absolute
Spirit’s self-knowledge. Consequently, the history of art, religion, and
philosophy reveals the progressively more evolved stages in the Spirit’s
self-development. It follows that the further and earlier into the past
and history one looks, the more primitive are the concepts, ideas, theo-
ries, and their manifestations in various civilizations. The later civili-
zations reveal more sophisticated artistic, religious, and philosophical
ideas and practices. The earlier religious notions of God and nature or
philosophical concepts of universality and particularity are wild, con-
fused, and unorganized. The later ones progressively display more and
more insight into the true nature of Spirit, until history culminates into
the fulfillment and complete self-awareness of Absolute Spirit.
in self-awareness (both as the idea and its manifestation) is really the
all-pervasive core, the distilled essence of Hegelian thought that per-
meates the content and structure of all his works from Phenomenology
and Encyclopedia to his political writings. All this informs his aesthetic,
religio-philosophical, ethical, and political assessment of civilizations.
For the purpose of this paper, to understand Islam as a religion in Hege-
lian terms, it is concise to concentrate on his philosophy of religion.
tion; religion is relatively less self-reflexive than philosophy. However,
both concern themselves with the same content, namely the absolute.
Philosophy articulates the concept of absolute as Spirit, whereas reli-
gion conceives it as God.17 Fackenheim explains the common content
of religion and philosophy and argues for the dependence of the latter
“Hegel begins by defining religion as ‘a mode of consciousness’ that seeks to establish the
truth of the relationship between man and God.” Hegel maintains that this truth has been
expressed in different ways at different times. Speculative philosophy is trying to articulate
already is the true ‘content,’ lacking merely the true ‘form’ of specula-
tive thought; that philosophy could not reach truth unless its true con-
tent preexisted in religion; that philosophic thought therefore requires
religion as its basis in life, and that the true philosophy, in giving the
true religious content its true form of thought, both transfigures reli-
gion and produces itself.”18
Spirit, God is also subject to triadic dialectical development. This
implies that God, as the absolute substance, as infinite divine univer-
sality, is, at first, only implicit, abstract, and indeterminate. The dialec-
tical movement necessitates that God—this abstract divine universal
principle—concretizes itself. God concretizes itself by becoming an
object of human consciousness. Human consciousness knows, feels, rep-
resents, or thinks about God, thereby giving the abstraction of divine
universality some concrete determinate form. The implicit universality
thus particularizes or concretizes itself in human consciousness. The
third moment of God’s dialectical movement is achieved when human
consciousness elevates itself to God, thereby sublating the opposition
between human finiteness and divine infinity, human particularity and
divine universality.19
sciousness comprehending God; it is a process of God knowing him-
self.20 Hegelian dialectic is a self-movement of concept toward com-
plete self-cognition. As Schlitt explains, “In Hegel’s philosophy God is
a dynamic movement of inclusive divine subjectivity.”21 This suggests
that Hegel complained that Protestant demagogues in Berlin should not stigmatize phi-
losophy, because it told the same truth in a nonreligious philosophical language. Laurence
Dickey, “Hegel on Religion and Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed.
Frederick Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 309.
ana University Press, 1967), p. 23.
Oxford University Press, Clarendon, 2007). As the lectures have three volumes—I. The
Concept of Religion, II. Determinate Religion, and III. The Consummate Religion—henceforth
they will be identified with their volume name and number.
self-knowledge: “God is God only insofar as he knows himself; his self-knowledge of himself
is moreover his self-consciousness in man, it is man’s knowledge of God that goes on to
become the self-knowledge of man in God.” Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1975), p. 481.
passive; it is an active subject acting on its own account, determining
its own dialectic development. Second, as Schlitt suggests in the above
quote, God is an inclusive subjectivity: In the third moment of self-
cognition God contains within himself the sublation of particularity
and universality, of finiteness and infinity. Third, the concept of God
is a movement: It is not an abstract static entity; it is a dynamic self-
determining dialectical movement.
partite structure not only to the concept of God, but also to religion.22
Religion is also a concept, which itself is subject to its own triadic
dialectical self-movement, which involves the concept itself, then its
concretization, and finally its fulfillment in complete self-cognition.
Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion thus also display the triadic
structure, which corresponds to the three stages of the dialectic devel-
opment of a concept. His work is divided into three component parts:
(1) “Der Begriff der Religion,” which explains “religion” as a concept;
(2) “Die bestimmte Religion,” which examines the concretization of
the concept in actual determinate world religions from Chinese reli-
gions, Hinduism, and Buddhism to Greek, Jewish, and Roman ideas
and practice, and places them in historical and conceptual progression;
and (3) “Die vollendete Religion,” which argues for Christianity as the
consummate religion embodying the fulfillment of the concept and its
actualization in reality.
implicit abstract concept, as an embodiment of the process of God’s
development toward self-cognition.23 According to Hegel, given the
dialectic development of God, the concept of religion also necessar-
ily displays three aspects: (1) the concept of God—that is, an implicit
abstract notion of divine absolute universality; (2) the knowledge or
concretization of God—that is, a theoretical way in which human con-
ton, N.Y.: University of Scranton Press, 1990), p. xiv.
dyadic form, as objective and subjective, arguing that religion is the unity of the object or
God and the finite subject who is conscious of the object. Schlitt, Divine Subjectivity, p. 104.
complete self-cognition, Hegel rejects the Romantic notion of the unknowability of God.
Hegel did not agree with Romantic spirituality, which focused on the devotee or the wor-
shiper, made religion completely subjective and accepted “the conclusions of Enlighten-
ment epistemology that nothing can be known about God . . . but that he is.” Taylor, Hegel,
p. 481.
ship and worth vis-à-vis the absolute universality; (3) cultus—that is, a
practical way in which human consciousness elevates itself to infinite
divinity, sublating their difference in “the knowing of myself within
God and of God within me.”24
cept’s particularization and concretization in actual world religions. For
Hegel, every determinate religion of the world, Eastern or Western,
ancient or modern, must be investigated for the extent to which it
accomplishes the above-mentioned triadic dialectical structure. How-
ever, the religions are not to be examined in isolation, disregarding
their chronological and other connections. This is because the second
moment of concretization in Hegel’s dialectic development necessar-
ily entails a teleological progress of a concept toward self-fulfillment.
Therefore, the determinate or bestimmte religions of the world embody
the historical developmental stages of the concept of religion itself,
until it reaches its perfection in the consummate or vollendete religion
of Christianity. Hence, all of the religions except Christianity are only
imperfect and flawed stages of the journey, within which the concept
has not yet reached perfection. They attempt to display the concept of
religion and the triadic development of God—universal divinity, its
concretization, and cultus—but they reveal this structure with more or
fewer imperfections, depending upon where a particular religion stands
in time within the development of the concept of religion. Hegel pro-
poses that the conceptual or philosophical development of religion
coincides with the historical progression of religions. He proposes that
the philosophical analysis of a religion’s triadic structure can locate
a given religion within a particular stage of historical development.
Conversely, as the philosophical examination reveals a religion’s his-
torical placement, the historical placement of a religion indicates its
philosophical worth.
the more Eastern) the religion, the less evolved it is. Eastern religions,
including Chinese religions, Hinduism, and Buddhism are, for Hegel,
the earliest and therefore the least advanced and most primitive reli-
gions, which he labels unmittelbare or “immediate” religions. Their
primitiveness consists primarily in the inconcretness of their divine
principle. From here the concept of religion moves through Persian
and Jewish religion, in which the concept of God becomes progres-
sively more concrete. Finally, the Roman religion enables the transi-
tion into the consummate religion of Christianity. The third part of
Hegel’s philosophy of religion—“Die vollendete Religion”—discusses
Christianity as the consummate religion. For Hegel, the defining
aspects of Christianity consist in God creating the world and creating
man in his own image, the fall of man from paradise, God begetting
his son, the son’s death, resurrection and ascension, and finally the
Holy Ghost enabling humans to elevate their finitude to a spiritual
union with divine infinity. These aspects, according to Hegel, perfectly
embody and fulfill the dialectical development of the self-determining
God: the abstract universal divine concept—God—begets a son and
thus concretizes himself in humanity, and through man sublates the
opposition of human finitude and divine infinity, thereby reconciling
with himself. In Christianity both the concept of God and the concept
of religion find their fulfillment and perfection.
existence nothing can become fixed, but that everything is destined
to expand itself in activity and life in the boundless amplitude of the
world, so that the worship of the One remains the only bond by which
the whole is capable of uniting. In this expansion, this active energy,
all limits, all national and caste distinctions vanish; no particular race,
political claim of birth or possession is regarded—only man as a believer.
To adore the One, to believe in him, to fast—to remove the sense of
speciality and consequent separation from the Infinite, arising from
corporeal limitation—and to give alms—that is, to get rid of particular
private possession—these are the essence of Mahometan injunctions;
but the highest need is to die for the Faith. He who perishes for it in
battle is sure of Paradise.25
Philosophy of History, in which he dedicates but five pages to Islam. In
History of Philosophy, too, “Arabian philosophy” earns a few paragraphs
and a kinship with Oriental pantheism but not enough worth to claim
Books, 2001), p. 374.
Encyclopedia has isolated references to Islam; in his Philosophy of Reli-
gion, too, unlike he does with other religions, Hegel does not dedicate a
specific section, category, or extensive attention to Islam; his references
to Islam are strewn in all three volumes of the work. These scattered
assertions need to be understood in the framework and background of
Hegel’s dialectical tripartite structure. As with any other religion, he
also evaluates (1) how Islam defines God—that is, the divine abstrac-
tion; (2) how Islam envisions human concreteness; and (3) whether a
true sublation takes place between the two.26 Understanding Hegel’s
view of Islam in this context makes his remarks comprehensible, to say
the least, but it also helps us realize that they are not just a side note
or his contemplative musings outside of the core of his philosophi-
cal doctrine. As he claims that his philosophy is an all-encompassing
system, he is compelled to show how Islam fits in it or in the least
argue how it is an anomaly. In that sense, Hegel’s tripartite evaluation
of Islam also reveals the loopholes that can threaten its teleological
vision in his supposedly tightly wound system. After all, Islam emerged
temporally later than Christianity, and, by Hegel’s trajectory, it should
qualify for being more evolved than it. However, in order to escape the
awkward predicament of throwing Christianity off its throne, Hegel
applies to Islam his often repeated bullet points of criticism that he
uses for Hinduism and other religions to discredit Islam’s vision of God
and the place and function of man vis-à-vis the divine absolute. As we
shall see, he deems the God of Islam so abstract that it does not have
any concrete content or self-determinacy to be in charge of its own
conceptual development, and criticizes that in Islam human life and
like to surpass Hegel for better understanding of different religions, in some ways promotes
Hegel’s methodology of analyzing religions under specific standardized philosophical cat-
egories: “If we shift the focus from a larger rubric, ‘Christianity,’ to the specific features that
constitute its consummateness, we can begin to examine particular religious communities
with a more fine-grained lens, appreciating precisely what self-conception and conception
of others are produced by that cultus. In this respect, Hegel’s philosophy of religion gener-
ates a research agenda, studying religions specifically for the self-understandings they incul-
cate in participants. For such queries, our categories will need to be much more specific than
‘Christianity,’ or ‘Islam’ attending closely to differences within these two larger categories,
for instance. Doing so may enable us to perceive—much more clearly than Hegel could—a
wider range of doctrines and practices that cultivate the self-conceptions he finds uniquely
instantiated in Protestantism.” Thomas A. Lewis, “Finite Representation, Spontaneous
Thought, and the Politics of an Open-ended Consummation,” in Hegel and the Infinite:
Religion, Politics, and Dialectic, ed. Slavoj Zizek et al. (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), p. 213.
service of the One divine abstraction. Since he criticizes the very core
philosophy of Islam as flawed, as rather a regression from the Christian
God, who concretizes himself in human form, consciousness, and his-
tory, Islam cannot even play the role of the facilitator religion, which
can be instrumental in Christianity’s own evolution from Catholicism
to Protestantism. The self-determining God and conceptual core of
Christianity itself make it possible.
One” absolute divine universality. For him, it is certainly an advance-
ment over Judaism, which restricts the divine principle to a chosen
community; Islam acquires that principle and extends it to the entirety
of humanity. The concept of God in Islam is not a privilege enjoyed
by birth or nationality, and access to it is not hierarchically bestowed
by caste or any other social order. There may be hierarchies in society,
clearly, but everyone, kings and slaves alike, are equally included in
the service of God: “from any people, who fears God is pleasing to
him, and human beings have value only to the extent that they take
as their truth the knowledge that this is the One, the essence. The
determination of subjects according to their station in life or class is
sublated; there may be classes, there may even be slaves, but this is
merely accidental.”27
in anthropomorphic or otherwise forms. Consciousness of “the One,”
thus, is an attempt to grasp a sheer abstraction, without any tangible
embodiment, image, or even link or mediation. Even “Mahomet,” the
prophet, is still a man, and hence does not embody divinity in the
same sense as Christ does. Islam makes “the abstract One the absolute
object of attention and devotion, and to the same extent, pure subjec-
tive consciousness—the Knowledge of this One alone—the only aim
of reality; making the Unconditioned [das Verhaeltnisslose] the condition
[Verhaelt-niss] of existence.”28
that includes the entirety of humanity seems like high praise coming
from Hegel. He even goes so far as to say, “This One has indeed, the
28 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 372.
antithesis because it occupies a sphere equivalent to that of the Chris-
tian religion.”30 High praise indeed, almost to the point of jeopardizing
his system: If the universal divine absolute in Islam has the quality of
Spirit, it has the potential to compete with Christianity for the top
spot. However, Hegel immediately resorts to applying the same criti-
cism to the universal concept that he simultaneously uses to evaluate
Kant and even Hinduism and Buddhism—religions temporally and
conceptually as far away from Islam as possible. The criticism is that
the universal concept is so abstract that it does not have any concrete-
ness. “God has no content and is not concrete.”31 For Hegel, Kant’s
Ding an sich is unknowable, unreachable, and only beyond and nega-
tive of representation. Likewise, nothing can be said about the Hindu
brahman; it is such a pure abstraction that it is empty, devoid of all con-
tent, and functions only as the opposite of everthing concrete, which
must dissolve itself to become one with brahman. And the Buddhist
nirvana, by definition, is the extinguishing of all things; it is pure nega-
tion, emptiness. It is this “epistemological renunciation” that frustrates
Hegel.32 For him, complete abstractness, while being a pure Oneness,
is unfit to ground human existence in a meaningful way or to ensure
a true sublation between human particularity and divine universality.
True dialectic between two opposite concepts is achieved only when
they both have equal status in defining the other, and only when they
are both at once preserved and overcome in the third moment. If one
of them has to dissolve itself completely in order to unite with the
other, then real sublation in the Hegelian sense is not accomplished.
So to become one with the One if human existence has to obliterate
its concreteness into divine abstractness, then it is a clear sign that the
concept of religion has not fulfilled itself.
“yet because subjectivity suffers itself to be absorbed in the object, this
One is deprived of every concrete predicate; so that neither does sub-
jectivity become on its part spiritually free, nor on the other hand is the
object of its veneration concrete.” 33 “Subjectivity” in this quote refers
to human consciousness, which has for its object of veneration “the
One.” However, due to the complete abstract conceptualization of the
30 Hegel, Consummate Religion III, pp. 242–243.
31 Ibid., p. 244.
32 Almond, History of Islam, p. 118.
33 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 373.
and in seeking union with it, it is completely absorbed and erased.
with the Divine Absolute
is what defines it. In any religion, such as Judaism or Islam, where God
is comprehended only under the abstract category of the One, this
human lack of freedom is the real basis, and humanity’s relationship to
God takes the form of a heavy yoke, of onerous service.”34
ity is to serve him. There is an undeniable hierarchical relationship
here, in which human consciousness is not given the status and free-
dom to be the vehicle through which God can know himself. God
remains an isolated entity outside of humanity, and it is the latter’s
obligation to fear him, submit to him, remain under his authority, and
give itself up in his service. “The worship of the One (Allah) is the
only final aim of Mahometanism, and subjectivity has this worship as
the sole occupation of its activity, combined with the design to subju-
gate secular existence to the One.”35 Ivan Kalmar’s words in this regard
are absolutely crucial:
demand devotion to a sublime power broaching no opposition and
needing no counselors. But they couple obedience to that power with
faith in its benevolence . . . The conception of a sublime power ruling
the universe (or the state) brings with it the anxiety that this power is,
in fact, unloving and uncaring . . . Christians who vilify Muslims . . .
are afraid to recognize this monster as a common Abrahamic inven-
tion . . . they project it—have always projected it onto the Muslims
as if it were the downside of Islam alone (and maybe of Judaism as
well) and not of Christianity. This perverse process of projection . . .
explains—more than the relevant facts—the persistent picture in the
Christian West of Muslims as slaves, soldiers, and terrorists of Allah:
fanatical devotees of a remote and terrifying sublime power.36
35 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 372.
36 Ivan D. Kalmar, Early Orientalism: Imagined Islam and the Notion of Sublime Power,
the beginning, but only the beginning, of wisdom. To look at God in
this light, as the Lord, and the Lord alone, is especially characteristic of
Judaism and also of Mohammedanism. The defect of these religions lies
in their scant recognition of the finite, which, be it as natural things or
as finite phases of mind, it is characteristic of the heathen and (as they
also for that reason are) polytheistic religions to maintain intact.” 37
Since God as the “unconditioned” One is the condition of all concrete
existence, and yet it itself is a complete and utter abstraction, concrete
human existence lacks any substantial anchoring in that concept. This
again is the same criticism Hegel applies to pantheistic notions of God,
in which the all-encompassing divine concept is too universal to pro-
vide a grounding for any concreteness for human activity. In such a
philosophical insecurity, concrete human existence is either rejected as
a dream, an illusion, or an existence only to be escaped and overcome,
as Hegel sees in some Indian schools of thought, or here in the case
of Islam, it is totally arbitrary, aimless and wandering, flaky, unfixed,
and subject to utter instability like the Arabian sand in the wind. In
“Arabian Philosophy,” in which Hegel puts Jewish and Muslim think-
ers together, he refers to the Medabberim who believe
no reason at all why anything should be one way rather than another.
They term it a mere habit that the earth revolves round a centre-point,
that fire moves upward and that it is hot; it is just as possible, they say,
that fire should be cold. We thus see an utter inconstancy of every-
thing; and this whirl of all things is essentially Oriental . . . which
allows of nothing definite. God is in Himself the perfectly ,
His activity is altogether abstract, and hence the particulars produced
thereby are perfectly contingent; if we speak of the necessity of things,
the term is meaningless and incomprehensible, and no attempt should
be made to comprehend it. The activity of God is thus represented as
perfectly devoid of reason.38
morality and ethics, its state structure and political activities. For
ists Internet Archive, http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/admin/books/hegels-logic/Hegels
-Logic , accessed 3 November 2013.
ternet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hparabian.htm,
accessed 3 November 2013.
politically and ethically erratic and tentative society, and, conversely,
the sociopolitical and ethical instability gives an insight into what the
“idea” of Islam must be. In Muslim states and societies, says Hegel,
excess and extravagance in either direction—love or cruelty—com-
pletely overtake any notion of virtue or morality: A king abandons his
scepter and throne for the love of his slave just as easily as in a stroke
of anger and vengeance he would have their heads cut off. Dynasties
come and go; human life has no worth; the sphere of human activity is
boundless but has no aim or direction. Hegel mentions Islam’s religious
and political expansion from Syria to Persia and Asia Minor and from
Egypt and northern Africa to Spain and southern France.39 However,
he adds, “But all this is only contingent and built on sand; it is to-day
and to-morrow is not. With all the passionate interest he shows, the
Mahometan is really indifferent to this social fabric, and rushes on in
the ceaseless whirl of fortune . . . Those dynasties were destitute of the
bond of an organic firmness, the kingdoms therefore did nothing but
degenerate; the individuals that composed them simply vanished.”40
Hegel does acknowledge that the Arabs zealously promoted art and
literature, and built cities, schools, and commerce, that science and
philosophy came from the Arabs into the West, that poetry and imagi-
nation were kindled among the Germans by the East. “But,” he adds,
“the East itself . . . sank into the grossest vice.”41
human thought and activity, is the worship of God, and that is the only
bond between humans. Other than that there exists nothing that can
define, prescribe, or moderate any relationship between them. Social
institutions exist, but without foundation. “It is only a singular pur-
pose that all peoples should be brought to glorify the Lord.” 42 This, for
Hegel, is what drives Islam to aspire for “world domination,” and makes
the religion “fanatical.” Hegel clarifies his earlier mentioned comment
claiming Islam to be an “antithesis” of Christianity:
developed concretely within itself and is known as Trinity, as spirit; and
that human history, the relationship to the One, is likewise a concrete
40 Ibid., p. 375.
41 Ibid., pp. 376–377.
42 Hegel, Determinate Religion II, p. 438.
everything concrete; its God is the absolute One, in relation to whom
human beings retain for themselves no purpose, no private domain,
nothing peculiar to themselves. In as much as they exist, humans do
in any case create a private domain for themselves in their inclina-
tions and interests, and these are all the more savage and unrestrained
in this case because they lack reflection. But coupled with this is also
the complete opposite, namely the tendency to let everything take its
own course, indifference to life; no practical purpose has any essential
value. But since human beings are in fact practical and active, their
purpose can only be to bring about the veneration of the One in all
humanity. Thus the religion of Islam is essentially fanatical.43
in the essential philosophical core of Islam that make it fanatical: First,
the concept of God is extended over all of humanity, which must be
brought to acknowledge it; second, man is to live in fear and service of
that God, without freedom; and third, other than the worship of that
God, no other content of human thought or activity is real, lasting, or
instrumental in creating a bond among people. The only purpose is to
live or, better yet, die for God with “sensual enjoyment . . . as a reward
of the faithful in Paradise.”44
human consciousness and activity have not been given their proper
place, compatible status, and value in the equation between man and
God. If man is subservient to God, in his fear, and unhinged and lost
in unlimited superficial activity, then man cannot be a vehicle for
God’s self-awareness; consequently, the concept of God itself, by being
removed and disconnected from man, is not evolved and self-deter-
mining enough, not in charge of its own conceptual development and
actualization in man.
disregard of the worth, self-determinacy, and groundedness of human
existence. Human consciousness and activity are God’s concretization
of himself and the means of his self-knowledge. Any religion that seeks
to devalue human life or the substantiality of social institutions, any
civilization that has the character of aimless, arbitrary, and unstable
existence, that is here now and gone tomorrow, is a civilization that has
not understood its own worth as the embodiment of God. Any religion
44 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 377.
creteness in the abstractness of the One, is incapable of truly grasping
the essence of sublation.
and grounded, and man is limited to the role of a servant vis-à-vis God,
there is certainly no possibility of sublation in the Hegelian sense.
“God’s acceptance has occurred once and for all, and what replaces
reconciliation and redemption is something that has implicitly hap-
pened, a choice, an election by grace involving no freedom. [We have
here a] view grounded on power, a blind election, not an election made
from the viewpoint of freedom.” 45 This is an incredibly crucial state-
ment. Before one attempts to interpret it with secular and current con-
cerns of “freedom”—too much of it or not enough46—it needs to be
understood in Hegelian terms within his philosophy of religion. To be
sure, I do not intend to defend Hegel’s opinions about Islam; I simply
clarify them. The way Hegel sees it, in Christianity, the very possibility
of elevating human consciousness to divine infinity implies freedom.
Articulating the divine absolute, realizing one’s relationship to it, and
raising human consciousness to divine infinity is a process, a move-
ment of actualization, at the end of which sublation of God and man
is achieved. And this process happens as and when (and, to make the
point, if ) human consciousness unfolds it. In that sense it implies a free
choice. In Islam, according to Hegel, there is no such process required,
because it has already “implicitly happened.” The definition of the
divine absolute as the Lord and man’s relationship with it as servant is
axiomatically given at the very outset, without choice or without any
need to contemplate and realize it. Hence, says Hegel, there can be no
process, no freedom, and hence no possibility of sublation. Sublation
would take place, if some philosophical and religious-spiritual practice
were in place in Islam that would help man raise his consciousness to a
union with God in a way that human particularity is preserved in the
divine absolute.
listeners of this paper was, What about Sufism? In Sufism is a union
46 Salama, Islam, Orientalism, and Intellectual History, pp. 113–115.
spiritual sense, to go against prescribed notions of religiosity, and find
an intimate and real connection with God in a way that a union of
man with God, a recognition of the divine within, is encouraged and
accomplished? The question here, however, is not what kind of reli-
gious philosophy Sufism presents, or what the difference is between
Sufism practiced in various parts of the world, and much less how we
understand Sufism today. The question is if Hegel would agree to call
Sufi mysticism (or any mysticism) sublation.
translations of Rumi and Hafez.47 To begin with, though, Hegel refers
to them in his discussions on poetry and art, which, according to him,
is a definitely less evolved and less self-reflexive mode of Spirit’s expres-
sion in the triad of art-religion-philosophy. And even in that discussion
he categorizes their poetry as “mysticism” under “Pantheism of Art.”48
larly among the Persians . . . To explain this more fully we would point
out that so long as the poet yearns to behold the Divine in every-
thing, and really so beholds it, he also surrenders his own personality;
but, while doing so, he realizes quite as vividly the immanence of the
Divine in his spiritual world thus expanded and delivered; and conse-
quently there grows up within him that joyful ardour of the soul, that
liberal happiness, that revel of bliss, which is so peculiar to the Ori-
ental, who in freeing himself from his own particularity seems wholly
to sink himself in the Eternal and Absolute, and henceforth to know
and feel the image and presence of the Divine in all things. Such a
self-absorption in the Divine, such an intoxicated life of bliss in God
borders closely on mysticism. Under this aspect no volume is more
famous than the Oschelaleddin-Rumi . . .49
F. H. Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn in 1785–1786 brings Spinoza’s
G. Bell and Sons, 1920), pp. 89–97; Gerrit Steunebrink, “A Religion after Christianity:
Hegel’s Interpretation of Islam between Judaism and Christianity,” in Hegel’s Philosophy of
the Historical Religions, ed. Bart Labuschagne and Timo Slootweg (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp.
236–240.
Limitations of a System,” available at http://www.grinell.se/Hegel%20reading%20Rumi
, accessed 15 February 2013.
Hegel all too well recognizes that claiming the entirety of the world as
an embodiment of the divine/philosophical absolute—Spirit—brings
his own thought dangerously close to pantheism, which believes God is
immanent in all the material world. Hegel defends speculative thought
against the charges of pantheism as well as atheism. That is to say,
he argues that the pietists (who declare that God is knowable only
in personal immediate feeling) and the Enlightenment rationalists
(who declare that God is unknowable because reason has limits) are
both wrong. Thought is not a finite human faculty and activity; it is
infinite and therefore able to conceive, articulate, and develop God.
While it might be admirable for art and poetry to express an emotional
experience of the pantheistic Divine, philosophy is too sophisticated
an enterprise to have a vague, empty, and abstract all-one-doctrine of
pantheism, to reduce God merely to an intuitive feeling, or to simply
banish God outside thought and reason.51 Hegel opposes the panthe-
istic all-in-one doctrine precisely by making a dialectic argument to
combine divine universality with concrete thought. In an all-in-one
pantheistic doctrine, God is everything in a way that it is indistinguish-
able from nothing. Hence, intuitive and immediate union with the
divine universality involves emptying of one’s mind of all concrete-
ness, all thought, surrendering all particularity. In meditation practices
of Hindu and Buddhist spirituality, for example, says Hegel, becoming
one with the divine abstraction does not preserve human concreteness.
The latter has to be utterly obliterated; the mind and consciousness
need to be completely absorbed and dissolved into God.52 Dissolution
of consciousness and thought to be one with the One is by no means a
sublation for Hegel.
which he does not, he would apply the same criticism of pantheism
to it that he uses for other “primitive” Eastern religions. We may refer
to Naim Şahin’s comparative philosophical study between Rumi and
Hegel, which, much like many other comparative studies in philoso-
phy, concludes with “some similarities” and “some differences” between
(Spring 2011 ed.), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/
mendelssohn, accessed 15 February 2013.
John Macquarrie, “Pietism,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale,
2006); F. Stoeffler, “Pietism,” in Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 2005).
“Oneness”; the real world is fleeting, and it has no absolute existence
vis-à-vis God, whereas in Hegel the world is absolutely necessary for
the embodiment and process of God’s self-actualization.54 Hegel would
whole-spiritedly agree!
realm of art, and that pantheistic mysticism is quite different from the
Muslim conception of God as the Lord, in whose fear and service man
spends and ends his life. Hegel is careful to state that in either idea of
God, though, human particularity needs to be absorbed; a sense of self
is required to be annihilated in the divine or in service of the divine,
not aufgehoben, elevated, or sublated.
explain the fact that it arose after Christianity? How does Hegel explain
this anomaly in the linear progress of history and thought? Exactly the
same way as he treats early philosophies of the East, namely by banish-
ing them if not completely outside then to the very periphery of his-
tory. For example, despite his relative openness to revise and recognize
Indian thought as “philosophy,” he claims that “philosophy proper”
began with the Greeks, and hence the earlier Eastern thought should
be placed on the outskirts as the “presupposition” of the history of phi-
losophy.55 In the same way, Islam should fall (and has fallen) on the
outside of religion on this side of the spectrum, after it has culminated
and ended in Christianity. “At present, driven back into its Asiatic and
African quarters, and tolerated only in one corner of Europe through
the jealousy of Christian Powers, Islam has long vanished from the stage
of history at large, and has retreated into Oriental ease and repose.”56
sis of Hegel’s understanding of Islam namely Hermeneutic and Criti-
Dshcelâ Leddin Rûmi Und G. W. F. Hegel,” Selcuk Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu
Dergisi 20 (2008): 747–777, http://www.sosyalbil.selcuk.edu.tr/sos_mak/articles/2008/20/
NSAHIN.PDF, accessed 22 February 2013.
55 Robert Bernasconi, “With What Must the History of Philosophy Begin? Hegel’s Role
Philosophy: New Interpretations, ed. David Duquette (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2003), pp. 35–50.
hermeneutic horizon and his system’s prejudices that filter his interpre-
tive lens, and in Ricoeur’s terms, we have critically revealed Hegel’s
exercise of power and domination in confining and condemning Islam
as a savage religious philosophy. On the hermeneutic hand, we see that
his scattered references to Islam in his Philosophy of Religion and other
texts need to be understood in the conceptual quest of his triads, in
order to philosophically parse what he exactly means by descriptions
as specific as “absorption in the abstract One” and even as general as
“fanatic” and “aimless.” He is looking for a concept of divine univer-
sality that is abstract yet concretized in human particularity and the
sublation of the two. In Islam he finds the concept of God too abstract,
and as a result a humanity that is ungrounded, disconnected, and sub-
missive to it, rather than being its free vehicle of self-determination.
Hegel’s situatedness in his core triadic dialectic dictates his reading of
Islam and leads him to his conclusions and judgments.
“inside candidate” (in the parlance of our profession)—Christianity—
creates a position description for the perfect religion that no other
religion can fit. His interpretive methods prompt him to dig into his
paradigm, impose familiar criteria on Islam to argue its imperfections,
and confine it in the threefold superstructure. It would be one thing,
although still an act of structural imposition, if he were to tease out
a conceptual design of Islam from within the information presented
to him, but his domination and violence consist in inflicting the tri-
adic framework from without and in blatantly repeating arguments
that would reinforce or leaving out information that would challenge
his judgments. References to the “Osman” empire, for example, are
sparse in Philosophy of History, which refer to its “terror” and acknowl-
edge that the “Osman race at last succeeded in establishing a firm
dominion,” only resulting in the fact that “fanaticism having cooled
down, no moral principle remained in men’s souls.” 58 The Turks are,
of course, “the terrible power which threatened to overwhelm Europe
from the East.” 59 In Philosophy of Religion, Islam is not given the sta-
tus of a separate chapter or section, worthy of focused and undivided
attention dedicated to it; it is demoted to scattered mentions that
Renegotiating Theories of the Germany-India Encounter,” Comparatist 34 (2010): 63–79.
59 Ibid., p. 452.
particular. Moreover, Hegel opens his good old bag of tricks and pulls
out the same vocabulary of criticism for Islam—namely, a much too
abstract unreacheable concept of the universal absolute—that he uses
for Kant (who shows the limits of reason), pantheism (that sees the
divine manifested in everything), Hinduism (a polytheism with a posi-
tive all-encompassing universal Self ), and Buddhism (with a negative
all-extinguishing nirvana) alike.
with each other is already a respectable task given where German Ori-
entalism theory is today. But to move it forward, we have to explore
further than one-sided Western appropriation of the East and wonder
what effect the other side has on the interpreter’s clarity, comfort, and
conviction. Hegel’s structural confinement and his obsessive omis-
sions and repetitions are not only evidence of a certain violence to his
sources, but also indicative of a desperation and anxiety that Europe,
Christianity, and his tightly wound system of philosophy might be
crumbling under the conceptual weight of foreign thought. What if
we pursue this anxiety? Hermeneutic consciousness implies that given
the precepts of his system, Hegel’s interpretation could not have been
much different. But what if we dive into the same precepts and show
that it could, if we use Hegelian paradigm and vocabulary itself and
argue Islam’s position in a way that could potentially destroy Hegel’s
teleology?
Hegelianism are crucial. First, a footnote by Slavoj Zizek in his article
“A Glance into the Archives of Islam,” in which he proposes Judaism-
Christianity-Islam as a Hegelian dialectic triad.60 Second, John Oli-
ver’s hilarious comments in an episode of The Daily Show explaining
the young adulthood and maturity of Islam (and Judaism and Christi-
anity) as they grow, age, and live out their lives.61
of religion Islam presents a problem of temporal and spacial contradic-
tion, given that it emerged after Christianity and is still ascribed to the
“Orient.” But more interestingly, he proposes that Judaism, Christian-
zizarchives.htm, accessed 25 September 2012. Also see http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj
-zizek/articles/a-glance-into-the-archives-of-islam/, accessed 16 October 2014.
mon-september-17–2012/actual-democalypse-2012–islam-s-growing-pains, accessed 19
Sep tember 2012.
ment: “first the immediate/abstract monotheism which, as the price to
be paid for its immediate character, has to be embodied in a particular
ethnic group (which is why Jews renounce all proselytism); then Chris-
tianity with its trinity; finally Islam, the truly universal monotheism.”
The first moment of Judaism conveys only a constrained and narrow
sense of monotheism/God, which rules over a restricted community,
which itself goes through trials and tribulations to conceive its mono-
theism consistently. Christianity is the second moment, in which the
initial un-self-aware abstraction of God becomes concrete, manifest,
and manifold (in the trinity) and partakes directly in history and human
particularity in the form of the son of God. In the third moment, the
original limited Jewish monotheism, having concretized itself in Chris-
tianity, fully reconciles with itself in Islam, sublates the concreteness
back into a now universally applied concept of the divine absolute.
Zizek strengthens the same argument with a different perspective:
when, in Christianity, the Son dies on the Cross, this means that the
Father also dies (as Hegel was fully aware)—the patriarchal genealogi-
cal order as such dies, the Holy Spirit does not fit the family series,
it introduces a post-paternal/familial community. In contrast to both
Judaism and Christianity, the two other religions of the book, Islam
excludes God from the domain of the paternal logic: Allah is not a
father, not even a symbolic one—God is one, he is neither born nor
does he give birth to creatures. There is no place for a Holy Family in
Islam. This is why Islam emphasizes so much the fact that Muhammed
himself was an orphan.62
tianity acknowledges this, uses this feature to establish an unprec-
edented connection between God and man, and thereby accomplishes
the concretization of God, and yet ultimately eliminates it. And Islam,
once again, overcomes the need of genealogy at all; it has no use for it
any more, now that it has reabsorbed the all-encompassing universal-
ity in its God. Zizek’s take on Judaism-Christianity-Islam as a Hege-
lian triad is indeed an interesting idea, which brings together the three
Abrahamic religions in a conceptually progressive and chronologically
consistent unity. While potentially resolving Hegel’s struggle with
Hegel’s teleological culmination into Christian perfection.
evolving through different religions, John Oliver of The Daily Show
urges his viewers to consider one single religion aging and maturing
through its own stages. As with everything on the brilliant Daily Show,
it too is a hilarious take on our own hypocrisy, but it is also an applica-
tion of the Hegelian organic evolution of a concept through the stages
of its life and its journey toward self-awareness. Hegel is not averse to
the idea of one single religion’s stages of maturity; after all, Christian-
ity matured into Protestantism too. If in Hegelian terms “God” and
“religion” are concepts that determine and carry out their own stages
of life, and earlier civilizational manifestations of the concept “reli-
gion” (Hinduism, for example) can be said to be in the “childhood”
stage of history, then “Islam” (or Judaism or Christianity) is a concept
too, in charge and subject to its life, age, and maturity. John Oliver
in his 17 September 2012 segment—“Islam’s Growing Pains”—pres-
ents just that notion. While reporting on the Cairo protests, Oliver
says, “We should really remember Islam’s young age.” The host, Jon
Stewart, exclaims, “What . . . Islam is fourteen hundred years old!” to
which Oliver responds, “Exactly, Jon, in religious years Islam is still
just a teenager and, to put it in context, think what Christianity was
doing when it was only fourteen hundred years old . . . exactly! Bloody
crusades, the inquisition, execution of heretics.” After big applause
from the audience and further discussion with Stewart on “what Juda-
ism was doing” when it was that young, John Oliver adds, “The point
is, Jon, there is good news, and that is that religions grow out of this
awkward phase. Again, look at Christianity. We’ve aged into young
adulthood, and now we can all laugh about the time we used to burn
young girls at the stake for being left-handed, or, as we called it back
then, witchcraft.”63
applicable:
quence of a tremendous and dangerous collision of two temporalities
or temporal modes. We must therefore think the untimely—that is, the
upsurge of a foreign temporality in our History as well as the upsurge of
our History in a foreign temporality . . . One of the dramas of our time
close proximity and juxtaposed to one another to live under different
temporal regimes.64
declaredly Hegelian, Oliver is clearly less serious, more popular, and,
perhaps, therefore, more problematic. The Daily Show audience, with
its religious relativism, would normally consider all world religions at
a given time equal and different, and would ideologically hesitate to
call one religion more or less primitive than another. Of course, there
are several subtle shades of the appeal of Oliver’s argument and several
reasons for the roaring audience applause. But if some of it is to allow
Islam some leeway in the wake of Christianity’s past, and if Goux’s
above words on the clash of temporal modes speak to us, then it is
indicative of the fact that Hegelian notions of temporalities and of
progressive journey of thought and action have long seeped into our
collective mind.
the above two examples, with his oft repeated argument that in Islam’s
case, because of its core conceptual insufficiency—God’s abstractness
and disconnection with the ungrounded unfree aimless humanity—it
has no device to mature into a sophisticated religion or to sublate the
triad of Abrahamic religions. But these applied Hegelianisms are pre-
cisely the occasions through which the weakness of Hegel’s system can
be exposed from within its paradigms in a way that Hegel’s preemp-
tive defense of Christianity cannot address. To be fair, rather than as
a fully reasoned philosophical counterattack on Hegel, these examples
are intended to serve as cracks and crevasses that would question the
strength and sustainability of his grand edifice. And in that capacity
they would open up a direction for East-West studies, in which herme-
neutic and critical consciousnesses can move forward together: Along
with understanding the Western interpreter’s horizon as well as expos-
ing his power and violence, they can explore the subversive agency of
the interpreted East in stirring up the interpreter, his anxiety ridden
defensive rhetoric, and thus the tipping of the power scales.
esting to imagine Hegel turning in his grave to see Islam not quite
“vanished from history,” 65 for not foreseeing its role in world politics
65 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 377.
rational West vis-à-vis an inherently religio-philosophically fanatical
Islam have been glaringly at play in intellectual, theological, political,
and popular discourses. Oliver’s reference to Islam’s and Christianity’s
ages and stages is not far from a nineteenth-century Orientalist—Julius
Wellhausen—who drew an analogy between Islamic rule and “Luther’s
view of medieval Catholicism . . . of Caesaro-papism, complete with
inquisition, executioners, and court astrologers.” 66 Pope Benedict XVI,
in his infamous 2006 Regensburg lecture, feels it justified to quote a
fourteenth-century Byzantine text and use Hegelian rhetoric to jux-
tapose European and Christian synthesis of faith and reason against
Islam, an irrational and fanatic religion based on obedience and abso-
lute submission to God.67 And the image of an analytical West and a
mystical East is far from gone from our popular perception. In Paul de
Man’s gloriously horrifying words, “whether we know it or not, or like
it or not, most of us are Hegelians and quite orthodox ones at that.”68 If
Hegel is, as Almond says, an oscillating sum of his “textual memory . . .
an intensely lexical phenomenon, an absorber, modifier and redistribu-
tor of the written,” 69 we have to ask ourselves how much we have inter-
nalized our textual memory of Hegel. Indeed, hermeneutic and critical
consciousness should go past being interpretive theories and together
become a self-reflexive consciousness.
67 David Nirenberg, “Islam and the West: Two Dialectical Fantasies,” Journal of Religion
68 Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology, ed. Andrzej Warminski (Minneapolis: University of
69 Almond, History of Islam, p. 133.
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