Theology and Doctrine
Religious Experience and Islamic Theology
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mustapha Tajdin
The systematization of theological precepts into organized doctrines threatens the very essence of any religious experience which, by definition, tries to escape the confinement of conformity. Spirituality and religious experience are generally overlooked by Islamic theologians allowing Sufism to grow along a different course. Although Islamic theology is generally speculative, this paper attempts to show that some Islamic theological concepts could, otherwise, help nurture a vivid religious experience owing to the fact that, the theological project in Islam is not limited to the nature and qualities of the transcendent God but also includes the need to account for His relationship with men. Not only does theology inform the religious experience, Sufism addresses questions of theological character. Islamic theology is the product of a speculative activity which started as a result of Muslims’ disagreements over issues of political succession (Imāmah) and human free will. Part of this activity was a response to external intellectual attacks on Islam. The paper discusses the possibility of building a spiritual religious experience in its universal form based on some theological doctrines. I concede to the fact that the issue of spirituality in Islam is to be found outside theology, but there are some schools of Kalām which proved to be in harmony with Sufism owing not only to preference but, more than that, to theological considerations. The example to be explored here is the Sunni Ashʿarite doctrine and how it is here assumed to provide solid grounds for a rich and universal religious experience.
Placing Gods in the Iconographic Program of Buddhist Temples: A Comparison Study of Early India Buddhist Sites and Chinese Temple Design
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tianshu Zhu
Depictions of various gods constitute a substantial part of Buddhist art. They are also essential in the iconographic plan of Buddhist temples in both India and China. In India, as shown at the early stūpa and cave sites survived to the present day, it is the images of gods that first appeared at the Buddhist monasteries even before the appearance of the Buddha image. Various supernatural beings are natural existence in the Buddhist cosmology. The Buddha and the Buddhist community of all the times were in the constant interaction with various deities. Gods of different natures function differently, and accordingly appear at different locations in Buddhist art. In India, images of chthonic territory deities, mainly yakṣas and nāgas, first appear in temple plans. Along with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the ideas about gods in Buddhist teachings and practices were also introduced into China. In China after the tenth century, the plan of a Buddhist temple became standardized. In a typical Chinese Buddhist temple, deities of different functions--as the protectors of the Dharma, the Buddhist community, the temple, and local earth god--are all incorporated into the iconographic program. This paper studies the layout of the images of various deities in temple plan and traces their history. By comparing and contrasting India and China, ultimately, the study aims to shed light on gods in Buddhism and the mechanism in culture transmission.
Liberation Theology: Origin, Expansion, Retreat and Survival of the Excluded People Images from 1970 to Present Time
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alfredo C Veiga
It focuses the historical and aesthetical process of the politic-religious art in Brazil from 1970 to present time, a period which gives birth and at the same time, a kind of disaggregation to an iconographic model that sets apart the traditional ones, consecrated by the church. Black people, Indians, migrants living in poor areas, marginalized women, offer their faces to Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ with the proposal of reaffirming the birth of a new man that revives from the ashes of colonization ruins and also from the politic and economic dependence which was imprinted in Latin America. Pictures, drawings, posters, body language become, themselves, documents produced by Liberation Theology during these decades. The focus will be not on style matters involved but, above all, through iconographic issues, the latency of an exuberant and effective Theology in its intention to become the voice of the poor and the marginalized. The originality of this research is to show how an ideal took shape through pictorial representations that facilitate its comprehension and acceptation from poor people, especially those who live at the margins of the big cities. In those places, thanks to this strategy, but also with songs, dances and new rituals, Liberation Theology had large acceptation and gained strength, spreading its seeds through the Cebs (Base Communities), and with them, cherished the possibility of creating a new society based on fraternal and fair relations, overcoming exploration and oppression that come from powerful people who serve the capitalist system
