فصلنامه قبسات
پیاپی 43 (بهار 1386)

In this article, the writer has guessed the future of the relations of religions and spiritual schools. After mentioning different possibilities of the relations of religions and religion-likes, he has explained ten factors that justify the possibility of an expansion of conflict between religions, including: instrumental use of political heads from religion, demand for power and selfishness of some nations and religions followers, obstinacy and conflict of the common and religious societies, religious exclusivism, revival of sad memories of historical conflicts, and etc.The writer believes that some factors justify and strengthen the possibility of convergence and interaction between religions, including: expansion of the information network, companionship of the family of Adam and appearance of universal companionship, the increase of human reason and dominance of correct-reasoning and finally accepting all religious facts and the true religion, having world-wide democracy and official acceptance of the diversity of religions and endurance of the opposite opinion, highlighting the common aspects of religions, management of the main political powers to use the authority of piety in order to equalize the domain of their power, and etc.This article ends up with some suggestions about the necessity of appreciation and cohabits between religions and religion-likes.

This article will try to discuss one of the main Christian theology matters, i.e. trinity, along with Islamic monotheism. First of all I have mentioned trinity in Christianity and holy texts, and the fact that what they mean by trinity and when did it formally enter Christianity? Some thinkers consider the belief of trinity as a result of the combination of Greek philosophy and Christianity in the early times. I have then mentioned the conflicts between Christian thinkers about divinity of Jesus Christ and trinity and also their motivation of considering trinity. At the end, trinity is criticized: believing divinity of Jesus Christ is a contradiction and all of the demonstrations of Christian thinkers for proving God’s existence, just indicates that God is unique. And also trinity implies combination and plurality of the necessary being by itself, which none of them are provable by reason. Finally the Quranic verses regarding the denial of trinity are mentioned.

The innate need to Salvation and deliverance is the basic reason for people to adopt the religions. The divine religions including Islam and Christianity had recognized this need and sought to respond that. The soteriology that is among the very important theological matters in Islamic and Christianity tradition should be consider in comparative. The Christian salvation has differences from that of in Islam.The truth of Islamic Salvation that bears the negative conception is get away from plight, disaster, hardship, and suffering. The strict meaning of it differs from the prosperity and triumph that use in positive conception.Although, From the Islamic views, God is savior but the humankind, with its free will and active part, bring about the conditions to acceptance the God's salvage.The fundament of prevalent Christianity is proclamation to the Jesus salvation that brought to the humankind as a gift. In this creed, that had firmed on the knowledge of God, human and Christ, the humankind who was in bondage of sin and death without any capability itself for salvation.From the God's direct mediation, namely "Christ with his redemption", the atonement of human's sin was paid. Therefore, the humankind will be free from the bondage.

Among the eleven living religions of the world, Islam and Christianity have special privileges and preferences because they are divine and Ibrahimi religions, have holy books and have insight and value and conduct doctrines – which is of course manifested in Islam in a more complete way – and have many followers. Among Islam and Christianity’s religious presuppositions, researching the importance and position of their divine books – i.e. Quran and the Bible – is very important and thus discussed in this article, because they affect all the other areas of religious cognition.Therefore the quiddity and position of Quran and the Bible are first independently discussed, then their common and difference points are explored. According to the belief of all Muslims and other firm evidences, Quran is descended through revelation during a limited time, i.e. 23 years, and with one language, i.e. the Arabic language, and on one person, i.e. the Prophet Mohammad peace be upon him, and without any change and has the advantage of immunity from alteration, while according to the belief of the Christians, the Bible is received through inspiration not revelation, during a long period of time, i.e. 1500 years, with various languages and on numerous people who are mostly unknown and also there is disagreement in the number of holy books and lack of immunity from alteration. Therefore Quran is absolutely superior from the Bible.

The discussion of the dialogue between religions is a long-time mentioned discussion; but the new needs of the world makes it necessary to have another discussion and speculation on this topic. In reality, the result of human attempts in the 1990-decade in the form of “dialogue” found a special structure and by the fall of the attractions of the pretentious materialistic ideologies and the fall of considering science and rationality as absolute, the tendency to religion increased in the age of globalization. Thus this question is raised: in a region that is affected by globalization, what is the role and position of dialogue between religions in human interactions and gatherings such as government-community. Focusing on the growth of anti-secular currents and the international tendency to new understandings of culture, this article explains the position of dialogue between religions in globalization.

The main question of this article is investigating factors that affect the intercourse between Religion's followers. According to the writer’s opinion, the most important factors affecting the form of intercourse between Religion's followers are: political powers and sovereignty and the form of their religious politics, the dominant cultural dialogues, the fundamentals of belief of a religion, the kind of understanding of leaders and religious priests and their conduct and finally the amount of national and racial fanaticism of religion’s followers. But more than considering this question and its answer, the writer has briefly investigated, in the first pages of the article, the intercourse of Christians and Zoroasters with each other in the centuries before Islam and also the intercourse of Polytheists and Jewish with Islam’s Prophet (peace be upon him) and Muslims and in contrast, the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) interaction conduct with them.

Philo of Alexandrian (Jewish) was born twenty years B.C. and died about forty-five A.D. He had a special position among other Jewish people during his life such that along with the conflict that was shaped between the Jewish and the government dependent to Rome, he went to Rome’s court as the Jewish ambassador. Philo is one the famous thinkers of the middle Platonic era and had a deep effect on the thinkers of the Semitic religions. Philo first presented many of the matters later presented by Ibrahimi religions. Wolfson, an American historian of history of philosophy, has called the religious thought or the thought of Philo as the most common and dominant thought of Ibrahimi religions from the first to the seventeenth century. In this article I have tried to investigate the effect of the central view of Philo, meaning logos, on Christianity.

Ibn-Maimonides is the greatest Jewish divine philosopher. At the end of his life, he wrote his literature masterpiece “Guide of The Misguided” (“Delalat-ol-Ha’erin”). This book, which is written in Arabic, shows the importance and effect of Muslim philosophers on the intellectual structure of Ibn-Maimonides. His thoughts is a result of a period of religious endurance and cultural cohabitation between Jewish and Muslims. In fact, Ibn-Maimonides was one of the greatest Jewish representatives and at the same time an authority in medieval philosophy inspired by Greek, and also one the main factors in the great growth of philosophical and scientific view of the Arab and Muslim world in the eleventh and twelfth century. In his “Delalat-ol-Ha’erin” (Guide of The Perplexed), Ibn-Maimonides is in the peak of his ability and collects the Arab and Islam knowledge and the Greek philosophy and Jewish theology in a general term that fulfills his goal. In this article, I will try to investigate theological perspectives of Ibn-Maimonides and compare them with Muslim thinkers.

Besides the denial of mystic and religious role of women in many religions, roles such as motherhood and--- has always been taken into consideration. Women ----role is in fact the knowledge of creativity in the feminine. This old model has always been effectively present among religions, such that Shakhina in Jewish culture, Sofia in Christian culture, the holy virgin in Manoit, Dacini in the Buddha and Shakti in the Indian culture are some of its examples. In the Islamic culture this divine aspect is perfectly manifested as Fater Fatimah. In the Buddha culture, which is the topic of our discussion, this role is created in the form of Dacinis in Tantarish Buddhism, which has some similarities to Ibn-Arabi’s look to women. The greatest amount of attention to women in Islamic mysticism can be seen in Ibn-Arabi’s thoughts. In this article we will investigate the two perspectives and their similarities and differences.