Abstract
In this response to my colleagues’ chapters, I try to draw together some commonalities of theme in the notion of love and protest. I suggest some future directions in which we can reflect together theologically and philosophically on the common problems and challenges in Abrahamic theism.
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Notes
- 1.
This is, of course, not the place to wade into the debates on the very nature of religions as family resemblances. This notion, derived from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations §67 (trs. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001, 36), has been invoked to provide a third way beyond essentialist and functionalist definitions of philosophy—perhaps, polythetic definitions. For discussions, see H.V. McLachlan, “Wittgenstein, family resemblances, and the theory of classification”, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 1 (1981): 1–16; Benson Saler, “Family resemblance and the definition of religion”, Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques 25.3 (1999): 391–404; Caroline Schaffalitzky de Muckadell, “On essentialism and the real definitions of religion”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82.2 (2014): 495–520.
- 2.
Again, I do not want to get into the discontents and dissonances raised by the very notion of the Abrahamic religions—sometimes seen as a form of supercessionist Muslim inclusivism, and at others as an attempt to expiate for premodern (Christian) Islamophobia—but one useful if critical assessment of Aaron Hughes, Abrahamic Religions: The Uses and Abuses of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
- 3.
Here, I am thinking not only of the Muslim theological arguments against the possibility of God’s lying (for example, see Sophia Vasalou, “Equal before the Law: the evilness of human and divine lies”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 13 (2003): 243–68, but also SherAli Tareen, Defending Muḥammad in Modernity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019) for its lingering importance in modern Islamic thought) but also a Wittgensteinian idea of trust for the efficacy of linguistic communication and participation in the language games—see Thomas Carroll, Wittgenstein Within the Philosophy of Religion (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 157–70.
- 4.
David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell & Universal Salvation, New Have: Yale University Press, 2019, and Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Islam and the Fate of Others: The Salvation Question, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). A number of other figures have also written on forms of universalisms and salvation overcoming suffering and evil. The gap between the prescriptive and normative tenor of Hart and the historical approach of Khalil is rather indicative of the distinct approaches to theology among contemporary Christian and Muslim thinkers.
- 5.
Jacques Derrida, ‘Marx and sons’, in Michael Sprinker (ed), Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, (London: Verso, 1999), 248.
References
Bentley Hart, David. That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell & Universal Salvation (New Have: Yale University Press, 2019).
Carroll, Thomas. Wittgenstein Within the Philosophy of Religion (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
de Muckadell, Caroline Schaffalitzky. “On essentialism and the real definitions of religion”. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82.2 (2014): 495–520.
Derrida, Jacques. “Marx and sons”. In Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx. Ed. Michael Sprinker (London: Verso, 1999).
Hughes, Aaron. Abrahamic Religions: The Uses and Abuses of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Khalil, Mohammad Hassan. Islam and the Fate of Others: The Salvation Question (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
McLachlan, H.V. “Wittgenstein, family resemblances, and the theory of classification”. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 1 (1981): 1–16.
Saler, Benson. “Family resemblance and the definition of religion”. Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques 25.3 (1999): 391–404.
Tareen, SherAli. Defending Muḥammad in Modernity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019).
Vasalou, Sophia. “Equal before the Law: the evilness of human and divine lies”. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 13 (2003): 243–68.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001).
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Rizvi, S. (2022). Reply to Weiss and Davison. In: The Protests of Job. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95373-7_7
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