Religious Patterns and their Consistency with Time Demands

Proving the religious patterns as being transhistorical would mean accepting the impact of these patterns in the lives of human beings; accordingly, religious patterns are not only exemplar in their time of presence, but also despite time demands, they would unveil their exemplar feature by passing through historical frontiers. In the history-oriented perspective of religious patterns, the paradigms of past, such as the Prophet (S.A.W.), cannot be exemplar for today; therefore, their way of life (sīra) is silent concerning contemporary philosophical, moral, and political issues and, in view of the lawmaker’s intentions, is related to a specific time! According to this attitude, with the presence of modern thinking, transhistorical understanding of the Book and the Tradition is incorrect.However, in view of the trans-historians, the eternality of social issues in cultural, political, judicial, religious, moral dimensions, etc. that the Infallible Imams (A.S.) have established, would not be overwhelmed by time demands, and any impression contrary to it is a result of erroneous mental and material preconceptions of religious doctrines as well as the academic and logical shallowness of the holders of this attitude.Anyway, such reasons as “the Qur’an and Sunna” and “inner nature and intellect” emphasize the transhistoricality of religious patterns as well as their consistency with time demands; the illusion of the inconsistency of time demands with religious patterns is rooted in contemporizing the software of religion and not separating factual propositions from actual propositions. On this basis, the styles that can be generalized by religious patterns and determining their direction with the help of the method of contemporizing their life style will remove the above-mentioned illusion.