نشریه معرفت ادیان
پیاپی 4 (پاییز 1389)

Some Christian writers believe that Christians have never worshiped Mary, although she is highly respected in Christianity. Accordingly, they hold that the Glorious Quran - God forbid - has wrongly accused Christians ofworshiping her, because one of the Quranic verses says that Christians consider Mary as god. The present paper, which investigates the issue seeks, on one hand, to prove that Christians worship Mary, and propagate and encourage other Christians to worship her evidence from eminent bishop's sayings and conduct of some Christians in different periods. On the other hand, it tries, by investigating the content of aforementioned noble verse to show that the Glorious Quran does not refer to what these writers claim, rather it focuses on a completely different issue.

The present article consists of two main parts. The first part touches upon the meaning, origin and development, various interpretations and explanations of the doctrine of Trinity over the historical periods. The second part is devoted to the way the Quran criticizes this doctrine. The word “Trinity” is mentioned twice in the Quran and it is rejected and criticized by the Quran.The Quranic verses define the Trinity as a blasphemous belief and point to the ground of its development. Some other verses, which do not explicitly mention the Trinity but stress the idea of the sharp distinction between the theistic idea of God and Christ in Islam and the Christian theological ideas based on the Trinity, strongly reject the main concepts of Trinity such as God's having a son, the Divinity of Christ, Christ as the son of God or the identity between Christ and God.

The present paper introduces a brief account of the dualism of Gnosticism. Gnosticism is a kind of esoteric gnosis and cognition through which, according to gnostics, man can free himself from both physical world and evil, and attain the spiritual world and good. Gnostics believe in dualism; they differentiate between three exalted real God and the God who has created this physical world. According to the followers of Gnosticism, the physical world is evil and corrupt and it has been created by a selfish and ignorant god. Christian Gnostics believe that the God of Jews, "Jehovah", is the creator of the physical world, and they think that the religious law of Torah is consistent with the will of this God. Since matter is evil, man's body is evil, too. Man's body must be weakened through certain practice and seclusion, and his soul which belongs to spiritual and transcendental worldmust be strengthened. The Soul is a gift from a good God and it must gain intuitive knowledge towards its main origin in order to be free from the physical world. However, since it gets stuck in this physical world, it forgets its origin. The good and transcendental God has sent his son, Jesus Christ, to help him remember the good God and his original position. Christian gnostic's beliefs on the reality of Jesus Christ, the physical world, its creator, and about the religious law of Torah have gone astray. Therefore, the orthodox Church considered gnostic beliefs to be dangerous and innovatory, and they anathematized these beliefs in the second century A.D

Contrary to the advice of Jesus Christ who told people not to call anyone "father", Christians called their eminent bishops who were theologians andwriters as Church fathers from the 1st to the 5th centuries. Here the Church is used to mean the whole Christianity. For theological reasons, the period of the Church fathers is of great importance for each of the three large Christian denominations. The area of study which deals with the life and works of the Church Fathers is called patrology. Christian historians have divided Church Fathers in various ways. For example, they have been grouped in terms of the language they speak. Therefore, we have Latin fathers and Greek fathers of the Church. There is also a group of fathers who do not belong to either of these two groups. The present inquiry deals with the subject.

Judaism has a history full of ups and downs, tensions, and challenges. The modern age is no exception, and characterized by decisive issues which are not only related to Judaism as a whole, but also has affected other religions and nations. The present paper investigates the grounds of Zionism formation by Jews, and the changes whichhappened as result of the development of new movements. The most important of these movements are Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment), Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative movements, each of which has an influential role in the fundamental changes. Generally speaking, this age witnesses the implementation of the idea of Zionism in Palestine, Jews movement to this territory, and displacement of Palestinians to other countries.

Yoga school is one of the philosophical schools of Hinduism, and is one of the six Astikas (the belief that heaven, and God exits- Vedic). Yoga school, like other philosophical schools of Hinduism, is a" school of salvation". Thisschool, like other Hindu philosophical- gnostic schools, believes that the basic problem of man is ignorance and lack of discrimination between real ego and noneego.The solution of this problem will not be possible without realizing the distinction between them.However, this school differs from other schools in two aspects: 1. it has a particular theory about salvation.2. It offers a special way for applying the salvation theory. According to the salvation theory of Yoga, the discriminating knowledge can only be attained through silencing thought and suppressing the movement of thinking. The special path of Yoga teaches practically eightfold graded steps to apply this fact, as well. This assay tries to explain the theory and path of salvation in Yoga school.

Puranas (sacred literature of Hinduism) are considered as the most influential Hindu texts in forming the way of thinking and theological system of recent and contemporary Hinduism. These texts, according to classical classification of Hindu texts are among the Smruti (unrevealed). Purana texts, with their pantheistic view of the world and by putting thecreatures in the hierarchy of Brahman's manifestation, incorporate multiple Hindu gods into a single theological system(and foster harmony between different god's functions which did not have clear relationships by then. Furthermore, these texts, by providing an idea about the stages and ranks of creation in which creatures are placed in a linear hierarchy in terms of their high and low degree of knowledge, consider that man's creation is positioned in the final stages of the hierarchy of Brahman's final aim of creating creatures, hence granting man a central role in the universe. The present paper tries to make a coherent Hindu world view, based on Purana doctrinesand teachings in three domains of theology, anthropology, and soteriology.