Critical Comparative Study of Intellectualist and Textualist Religious Modern Thinkers’ Views about Revelation

Religious modern thinkers with different trends try to preserve religion’s function in modern world. One of this trends is textualism represented by scholars like Shahroor and Abdolali Bazargan, while another trend is intellectualism presented by scholars like Soroush, Shabestari and Nasr Hamed Abuzeid. Based on the analytical descriptive method, this research aims to analyze, compare and criticize the opinions of both texualist and intellectualist groups about revelation and detects their strength and weakness. The results show that intellectualist strategy for solving problems of revelation is not superficial in specific cases but is changing the religious fundamental views, while textualists consider revelation superhuman and try to solve its problems by case. Efforts for relative comprehension of revelation, setting of establishment of outside religious interaction with non-religious people and the principal solving of problem of implementing the penal laws of the Qur’an in the modern era are some advantages of intellectualism. In addition, eliminating the Qur’anic law, providing for transcending its worshiping setting, and degrading the Qur’an to a human mistakable book are some of disadvantages of the intellectualism. In contrast, further adaptation of the superhuman view of revelation to textual facts, non-transcendence of Qur’anic law, and defense of non-conflict between revelation and science, are the strengths of the textualist approach while compelling interpretations of legislation and overcoming some challenging elements of the Qur’an in terms of timeliness, without clarifying their place in the modern world, is considered its weakness.