A common finding across many cultures has been that religious people behave more prosocially than less (or non-) religious people. Numerous priming studies have demonstrated that the activation of religious concepts via implicit and explicit cues (e.g., 'God,' 'salvation,' among many others) increases prosociality in religious people. However, the factors underlying such findings are less clear...

The specific question faced in this essay is whether special divine revelation has received embodiment in Holy Scripture. Are the Old and New Testaments to be acknowledged, not only as containing a record of the history of such revelation, but also as being themselves the very Word of God? Do they constitute divine revelation because of their intrinsic character, altogether apart from the respo...

This article explores the concept of transcendental happiness in philosophies arguably two most important figures Islamic intellectual thought, Abū ‘Alī ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037) and Muḥyī al-Dīn ‘Arabī 638/1240). The striking parallels between philosophy Ibn that is their agreement on Aristotelian principle as comprehension God, combined with emanationist cosmologies. Based Neoplatonist emanation...

One of the most difficult and perplexing tenets of classical theism is the doctrine of divine simplicity. Broadly put, this is generally understood to be the thesis that God is altogether without any proper parts, composition, or metaphysical complexity whatsoever. For a good deal more than a millennium, veritable armies ofphilosophical theologians Jewish, Christian and Islamic proclaimed the t...

human love, which in sufism and its critics’ expression usually appears in the phrase “virtual love”, is one of the most challenging concepts in islamic mysticism. the primacy of ruzbihan in this arena is in view of the fact that he declines to use the common phrase “virtual love” and instead he uses “human love”. he also emphasizes that experiencing of human love is inevitable for achievement ...

This article discusses the Nicene Creed with special regard to concept of homoousios (consubstantiation), which Jean-Luc Nancy recently has claimed be defining moment Western philosophy and self-deconstructive dynamic Christianity. While Adolf Martin Ritter, Pier Franco Beatrice, Christopher Stead, Heinrich Dörrie, Eberhard Jüngel, Thomas F. Torrance, others provide theological historical accou...

god-centered theories about the meaning of life maintain that a certain relationship with god is an essential condition for life to be meaningful. different interpretations have been proposed in regard to this theory, but the most important god-centered interpretation is the divine purpose theory. according to this theory, fulfilling god’s purpose is the only source of the meaningfulness of lif...