Papers by Najib George Awad (Dr. Phil
The Injīliyyūn and Their Relation to the Ecclesial Past: Tracing the Roots of a Worldview
BRILL eBooks, Oct 16, 2020
Collectanea Christiana Orientalia, 2025
One of the discourses that are ascribed to the Muʿazilites is their claim that the Qur’ān is crea... more One of the discourses that are ascribed to the Muʿazilites is their claim that the Qur’ān is created. We do have primary and secondary resources explaining this Muʿtazilite teaching and elaborating on how these rationalist mutakallims treated the Religious Text as a created entity. However, while the question of ‘how’ is intensively exposed in scholarship, what is yet to be answered is the following question: Why did the Muʿtazilites opt for this theological belief in specific? What drove them to argue for the createdness of the Qurʼān instead of just following the predominant trend of thought that was adopted by their contemporary Muslim Qur’ānic scholars, namely the belief that the Qur’ān is not just pre-existent but also an uncreated text? What could be the driving-force behind the Muʿtazilites’ parting ways with this mainstream conviction? This essay tackles these inquiries by means of proposing that the Muʿtazilites’ speech about the createdness of the Qur’ān is scriptural, linguistic, and exegetical in nature. It is expressive of their corosspollination with the other Muslim Qur’ānic scholars’ praising of the sacredness of the Qur’ān’s Arabic language; this belief that was commonly emphasized by the Muslim public. This might indicate that ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ is the Muʿtazilites’ way of questioning the ‘lingua sacra’ idea in correspondence with other Muslim traditionalists’ reservations on this sacredness. The essay develops this proposal by unpacking the stances of discourses on the Qurʼān from 2nd/8th-3rd/9th centuries onwards on the sacredness of the Qurʼān’s Arabic language. It, then, looks attentively at some of the main discourses on the createdness of the Qurʼān in known Muʿtazilite texts. The essay aspires at offering a new reading of the historical-contextual and religious factors that generated the controversy between Muslim scholars over the createdness of the Qurʼān, and wants to propose a possibility exceeds the classically believed political and power-game causing factors.
The So-Called ‘Nominal Christians’ in the Arab Orient
BRILL eBooks, Oct 16, 2020
Islamic Studies Journal, 2024
It is believed to be a fact that the Qurʾān takes a rejective and antagonistic stance to Christia... more It is believed to be a fact that the Qurʾān takes a rejective and antagonistic stance to Christian Christology and the belief in the crucifixion. However, is this conviction unquestionable or hard to re-consider? This article demonstrates that opting for revision and reconciliation, rather than antagonism and rejection, may be a considerable stance characteristic of how the Qurʾān approaches Jesus’s crucifixion in Sūra 4:157–158. The article offers an analysis of these verses, demonstrating that the Qurʾān’s concern about the crucifixion neither implements heterodox Christian views that deny it happened, nor does it negatively respond to the orthodox Christian insistence on the truthfulness of the cross. Rather, this article proposes that the Qurʾān attempts to develop an Islamic theological approach that resonates with a particular Christological trend, but was also adopted by the Qurʾān as it was a more appropriate revised interpretation of the fate of “Allah’s Word and Spirit from Him.” Discerning
the revisionary, propositional, and reconciliatory characteristics of the Qurʾānic attestations on the crucifixion not only invites observers to realize the serious dialogical, interlocutional, and connectional – and not just the apologetic – nature of the Qurʾān. It also unravels the fascinating development of the Qurʾān’s complex, multi-phased and multi-faceted theology, which amounts to more than a simple call to monotheism.
Dispensable and Inconsequential? Reflections on the Value of Tolerance in Interreligious Relations and Dialogue
Context: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Dec 25, 2023
In current intellectual discourse, some scholars believe tolerance is unnecessary to interreligio... more In current intellectual discourse, some scholars believe tolerance is unnecessary to interreligious interaction, viewing it either as veiled indifference toward others and their religious idiosyncrasies, or as crude relativism rooted in denial of the truthclaims and moral obligations of religious traditions. This essay addresses these ideas, and explores the possible connotations and hermeneutics of tolerance, providing a fresh reading of its role and value within interreligious relations and dialogue. It proposes a new status for tolerance, by exploring its potential meanings and values in perception of the self, and not just of the other. It then examines Christian-Muslim relations in Middle Eastern history and their notion of tolerance and reinterprets it in light of the Qur'anic notion of 'la ikrah'. A re-conception of tolerance is proposed, which invokes a new understanding of religiosity and religious affiliation: being tolerant in interreligious relations and dialogue means being one's true religious self.
“Min al-‘aql wa-laysa min al-kutub”
De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 18, 2017
Democracy without democrats, identity-formation and religions: The challenge of cross-pollinating self-perception in the post-Arabic spring contexts
Philosophy & Social Criticism, Apr 1, 2021
A decade has passed since the breaking out of the ‘Arabic Spring’ revolutionary phenomena all ove... more A decade has passed since the breaking out of the ‘Arabic Spring’ revolutionary phenomena all over the Arab World’s societies. Many challenging and radically intriguing developments and ramifications have eventuated out of that era and led the Arab World’s context into unchartered territories of existence and self-understanding. This essay pauses at one of the particular challenges that faces this Sitz im Leben, namely the question of identity-formation and self-perception processes. It argues that the Arab states do manifest in their political and statehood situations a political situation of democracy that is run by ‘non-democrats’. The essay then suggests that this democracy of non-democrats is the outcome of the prevalence of an identity-formation and self-perception rationales that are rooted in crudely religious Weltanschauung that, far from maintaining distinction and particularity individually and communally, turns alterity into a self-otherizing dogma expressive of contrariety and stark divisive and discriminative relatedness to the other. The essay, finally, suggests that liberating the identity-formation process from the dogmatic attempt at turning religion into ‘identity’ per se is the first required step towards a more cross-pollinating and symbiotic relationality between the different persons and groups who live in that context.
Towards an Arab Eastern Protestant Neo-Patristic Synthesis: a Proposal
BRILL eBooks, Oct 16, 2020
After-Mission, Beyond Evangelicalism
Islam and Christian-muslim Relations, Feb 13, 2014
Muslim World Journal, 2024
This short essay attempts at displaying briefly some examples of scholarly and intellectual inter... more This short essay attempts at displaying briefly some examples of scholarly and intellectual interests in al-Madina Document, which one can find in Arab and Western literature today. It endeavors to highlight the primary, focal conceptual orientations and the contextual concerns and motifs that make the Arab and the Western intellectual scenes approach this document from the distinguished perspectives they follow and to interpret its content from the specific dimensions of interest and focus they prioritize. After exposing in a survey-like and short analytical manner these different approaches, the paper will end with some assessments of each scholarly modus operandi and then suggest some aspects of reading that should not be ignored or sidelined if one wants to relate to the Madina Document in its own terms and fromwithin its own world and possible context, without ending up either eisegeting the document, or anachronizing its content or injecting its words with what they do not not essentially state.
Muslim World, Jun 1, 2020
Few, even are the contributions of authors from Middle Eastern Fundamentalist-Evangelical Protest... more Few, even are the contributions of authors from Middle Eastern Fundamentalist-Evangelical Protestantism that touch upon the relation with other faiths except from a missiological, evangelizing-proselytizing perspective. Recently, a Lebanese theologian from this community changed this habitus and produced a monograph on Christianity and Islam from an evangelical attention to the idea of "dialogue" and interreligious interaction. In 2019, Martin Accad, the Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut, published a book titled, Sacred Misinterpretation, on the subject of Christian-Muslim dialogue. While Accad personally reflects a very tolerant, embracive and open-minded appreciation of his growth and life as Christian with Muslims in Lebanon (something the writer of this review has also experienced in a similar way in his birth-land, Syria), Accad concedes fully the, rather, globally realized conviction that religions and their relations are core-components of conflict. Nevertheless, Accad also construes the primary motivation and belief of his book's discourse on Christian-Muslim dialogue are "the idea that religious discourse can also contribute significantly in working toward peaceful relations between populations with rival ideologies" (p. 6). How can religions become part of the remedy prescription instead of one of the conflict ingredients? The transformation of the role of religious interrelations and communication in our living context, Accad suggests, lies in reviewing the Christians' and Muslims' theological reasoning about each other: "Our theologies have been fundamental to our understanding of one another, and our murky relational history seems to indicate that our mutual perceptions have been largely negative" (p. 7). It is this essential role of theologization in the history of interreligious relation between Christianity and Islam that makes theology "a foundation of dialogue", Accad believes, so that the premise of his argument becomes: "Your view of Islam affects your attitude to Muslims; your attitude, in turn, influences your approach to Christian-Muslim interaction, and that approach affects the ultimate outcome of your presence as a witness among Muslims" (p. 7). Accad's discussion and analysis all over the book become, then, pieces assembled together, on the basis of the above-mentioned premise, to create what he calls "the SEKAP spectrum of Christian-Muslim interaction". SEKAP stands for "syncretistic, existential, kerygmatic, apologetic and polemical" (p. 8). From all these trends of interaction between Christians and Muslims, Accad leaves all those who resonate to interrelationality and focuses on the one that centers around theology: He opts for the "kerygamtic interaction" option, deeming it the most fruitful and peaceful position between the two extreme options of syncretism and polemics. According to him, this option more than any other enables the exploration and finding of the most 'Christ-like' symptoms in Islam and the Muslims. For Accad, this
Context: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2023
In current intellectual discourse, some scholars believe tolerance is unnecessary to interreligio... more In current intellectual discourse, some scholars believe tolerance is unnecessary to interreligious interaction, viewing it either as veiled indifference toward others and their religious idiosyncrasies, or as crude relativism rooted in denial of the truthclaims and moral obligations of religious traditions. This essay addresses these ideas, and explores the possible connotations and hermeneutics of tolerance, providing a fresh reading of its role and value within interreligious relations and dialogue. It proposes a new status for tolerance, by exploring its potential meanings and values in perception of the self, and not just of the other. It then examines Christian-Muslim relations in Middle Eastern history and their notion of tolerance and reinterprets it in light of the Qur'anic notion of 'la ikrah'. A re-conception of tolerance is proposed, which invokes a new understanding of religiosity and religious affiliation: being tolerant in interreligious relations and dialogue means being one's true religious self.
Theological Review, 2010
I intend in this paper to argue against the claim that theological
attention to Jesus’ divine ide... more I intend in this paper to argue against the claim that theological
attention to Jesus’ divine identity and nature is irrelevant to the historicalanthropological content of the biblical witness. I will basically tackle the following questions: what if attention to biblical speech about Jesus as the eternal Logos and the divine Son of God is constitutive of any historicalcritical study of the same Bible’s witness to Jesus’ human identity? And, what if salvaging scriptural speech about Jesus as the divine Son of God and the eternal logos, which the modernist historical-critical methodology of the school of the ‘Quest for the Historical Jesus’ tended to downplay, lies in paying attention to the negative outcomes of imposing an inappropriate, anthropocentric hermeneutic on the scriptural witness to Jesus Christ in general?
At the Dawn of ‘Practice’ or Re-thinking the Nature and Role of Theology and Doctrine in the Church
Journal of Reformed Theology, 2014
Are theology and doctrine the names of the church’s life of worship and proclamation, or are the... more Are theology and doctrine the names of the church’s life of worship and proclamation, or are they their foundations? Is it acceptable theologically to develop an understanding of theology and doctrine that would completely subordinate beliefs to practices to the point of completely functionalizing beliefs and turn theology and doctrine to mere way of life? In this paper, I address these important questions by displaying two attempts at understanding the nature and role of theology and doctrine. The first approach is exemplified in Kevin Vanhoozer’s proposal in The Drama of Doctrine, and Anthony Thiselton’s proposal in The Hermeneutics of Doctrine, while, the second approach is exemplified in Reinhard Hütter’s proposal in his valuable book Suffering Divine Things. By critiquing Vanhoozer’s and Thiselton’s approaches and siding with Hütter’s, I hope to stress that the accuracy of our understanding of the nature and role of theology and doctrine depends to a great and substantial extent on 1) how one understands theology’s relation to its primary subject matter, God, and 2) on the extent of the theologian’s belief that God, not just human talk about God, is the proper object of theology.
PLURA, Revista de Estudos de Religião / PLURA, Journal for the Study of Religion, Jan 23, 2013
What has the Jerusalem of dogmatic to do with the Athens of context, or how should one do context... more What has the Jerusalem of dogmatic to do with the Athens of context, or how should one do contextual theology? O que tem a ver a Jerusalém da dogmática com a Atenas do contexto, ou como se deve fazer teologia contextual?
Concluding Postscript. Theodore Abū Qurrah: A Melkite Orthodox Mutakallim in Dār al-Islām
De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 31, 2015
Uploads
Papers by Najib George Awad (Dr. Phil
the revisionary, propositional, and reconciliatory characteristics of the Qurʾānic attestations on the crucifixion not only invites observers to realize the serious dialogical, interlocutional, and connectional – and not just the apologetic – nature of the Qurʾān. It also unravels the fascinating development of the Qurʾān’s complex, multi-phased and multi-faceted theology, which amounts to more than a simple call to monotheism.
attention to Jesus’ divine identity and nature is irrelevant to the historicalanthropological content of the biblical witness. I will basically tackle the following questions: what if attention to biblical speech about Jesus as the eternal Logos and the divine Son of God is constitutive of any historicalcritical study of the same Bible’s witness to Jesus’ human identity? And, what if salvaging scriptural speech about Jesus as the divine Son of God and the eternal logos, which the modernist historical-critical methodology of the school of the ‘Quest for the Historical Jesus’ tended to downplay, lies in paying attention to the negative outcomes of imposing an inappropriate, anthropocentric hermeneutic on the scriptural witness to Jesus Christ in general?