The Importance of the Existential Approach to Understanding Religious Texts with an Emphasis on Monotheistic Propositions

The bilateral relationship between God and His servants are variously mentioned in religious texts such as the Holy Qur’an and Nahj al-Balaqa. There can be two kinds of relationships between God and His servants. The first kind of relationship can be called existential relationship which means a direct relationship with God Himself, not His mental image. The second type of relationship is non-existential which means one does not pay direct attention to God, rather he/she encounters the mental and abstractive concept of God. The existential view is dominant in monotheistic texts such as the Holy Qur’an and Nahj al-Balaqa. This means that, in addition to the theoretical aspect, the relation between Human and God has emotional, attractive, and tendentious aspects as well; yet the great attention of interpreters and commentators of religious texts on mere rational aspect and preferring it to emotional aspects of human, has deprived the interpretations and accounts of existential concepts which focus on human’s emotional and non-mental aspects. Yet the distinction of the two aspects (mind and heart) and magnifying their difference should not result in their opposition. The exaggerated preference of the theoretical aspects of religious texts and the exceeding application of mere theoretical language and giving high value to the non-existential literature may end up with lack of correlation of the common religious people with religion. Using semantics, conceptualization methods, paying attention to context and referring to the Holy Qur’an and Nahj al-Balaqa in this article, the existential and metaphysical approach to religion are distinguished and the importance of the existential approach for understanding religious texts are explained.