نشریه معرفت ادیان
سال هفتم شماره 1 (پیاپی 25، زمستان 1394)

Using an analytical and theoretical approach, this research aims to demonstrate the status of pilgrimage in Catholicism and in Shi’ism and underlines the similarities and differences between them. According to the Catholic Church, the church is regarded as God’s house and a place for holding religious rituals. The churches, convents and places of pilgrimage are the proper places for man to establish relations with God. In Shi’ism, building shrines in the site of the graves of the friends of God is given special attention and considering God’s friends as a means for intercession and meditation with God, the pious think that they can get God’s blessing through them. Both the Shi’a and the Catholic attempt to make their followers have a deep sense of pilgrimage and perform it as a kind of mystic rite. The main concern of the two religions is dissociation from this world and seeking for the eternal world. The main difference between the Catholic and the Shi’a about the concept of being pilgrim-like to the heavenly city of Jerusalem in Catholic is that pilgrimage in Catholicism, means living strangely on the land which has its root in such beliefs like the First Sin, Jesus Cross and the ascent of Jerusalem to sky. Shi’ism rejects such a doctrine.

The claim of "Jesus divinity" is the central point of the debate which was held between Imam Reza (AS) and Christian and Jewish scholars. Imam Reza (AS) introduced three proofs against this claim: a direct proof which refutes of Jesus’s Divinity, a proof which confirms Jesus’s prophecy and the prophecy of the Prophet of Islam (pbuh). Each of these three arguments contributes to reject the conventional thesis of the debate. Catholicos supports the claim of the divinity of Jesus. Imam recognized the conventional thesis and after some questions and answers, he, in addition to dismissing this idea, intelligently changed the conventional thesis to prove that Jesus (AS) and Mohammad (pbuh) are prophets. Using a content analysis method, this research is centered on the evidence presented by the Imam concerning these topics. Considering the condition of the debate and responding to the opponent’s request, Imam based his view on "reason" and "the Bible" to support his arguments. He offers two analogical proofs to refute the claim of Jesus’s Divinity. Then, he cites four phrases from the Bible and one logical proof to establish the other three ideas. Referring to the various versions of the Bible, the paper investigates Imam’s citations and, specifying the positions of quotations it elaborates on the probable differences.

Divine revelation is one of the main sources of the different religions of the world. Sikhism also emphasizes on this issue and talks about the revelation based on the idea of Shabad. A review of revelation in the Holy Qur’an shows that there are some similarities and differences between the Holy Qur’an and Shabad in Guru Granth Sahib. Shabad is by no means comparable with the divine revelation in Islam and principally with the prophecy of Mohammad (pbuh). The simplest idea about the revelation which is clearly evident in the Qur’an is others’ inability to compose something like it (revelation) as well as God’s promise about preserving the Holy Qur’an from alteration, which is a basic difference between the two beliefs.

Man always faced the question as to what time or history is. He asks himself, “what is time or history is?” And “What is our relationship with them?” This research seeks to answer this question in the light of the view of Hinduism by using an analytical-theoretical approach. In Hinduism two patterns: linear and circle are challenged and finally the circle plan of time (Kaleh) has a clearer representation. In circle time, time is a cycle in which the events of a, b, c etc. take place. One of the patterns of circle time is the pattern of transmigration which is a cycle of life and death. In the Avestan notion time is circle, too, but like Hinduism, it has no way for eternal return; rather a return to an eternal origin. The full period of limited time, which, according to Hinduism, lasts for twenty thousand years, comes after the last three thousand years of body resurrection and is a return to the origin. The second kind of time is linear and horizontal. The important point of linear idea is that it is a filamentary idea, according to which everything has one beginning and one end and these two cannot be alike and their movement is not possible. The present research, investigating the concept of time in Veda, Etheroda and Opehnished and their divisions and also philosophical schools of India, shows that history (Eity Hasa) has lost its general and common meaning and definition in the linear religions; because the Hindus do not take care of historical experiments and past events, rather they pay special attention to the meaning and doctrines in their religious texts.

Vishnu Purana is one of the eighteen basic Puranas and one of the basic texts of Vishnuite sect in Hinduism. In this text, a coherent structure of Hindu theism is presented by collating the ancient myths of Hinduism and the achievements of the important philosophical schools in India, like Vedanta and Sankhya, and multiple gods of various historical periods were incorporated in a pantheistic theology. Hence, this text is considered a good source about the developed type the belief in God in Hinduism. Using a documental-analytical approach, this paper extracts from this text the theological views about the most important issues, and, offering a logical explanation of the relationship between them, it seeks to arrange multiple gods and divinely creatures in a coherent order. The main findings of this research show that the theological system of Vishnu Purana is a kind of structure which is composed of the simple and impersonal essence of God Almighty and the identified levels of that essence. Classified into different forms, the impersonal essence of God exposes the different levels of creatures including triple and basic gods, subordinate gods, divinely creatures and natural phenomena; phenomena which en masse are a portion of Vishnu’s energy and so they should not be considered as a real and separate being.

Nowadays dealing with the moral issues in religions is of great importance. Investigating morality in different religions can contribute to discovery a specific structure. This paper seeks to offer such a structure and analyze it. In the composition of the different religions, the development of moral system is based on ontological, epistemological, axiological, anthropological and theological foundations and in every moral system, we can find at least six elements including value theory, fundamental principles, ethical rules, exposition of motivational factors, exposition of the sanctions and defending the moral system. Accordingly, moral science and the research works on morality which contribute to explaining the moral system are divided into three types: descriptive morality, which describes moral systems; normative morality which is responsible for detecting and or establishing moral systems; and meta-ethics which deals with the logical and philosophical research works which have to do with realities, concepts and moral propositions.