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The Yearbook of International Religious Demography presents an annual snapshot of the state of religious statistics around the world. Every year large amounts of data are collected through censuses, surveys, polls, religious communities, scholars, and a host of other sources. These data are collated and analyzed by research centers and scholars around the world. Large amounts of data appear in analyzed form in the World Religion Database (Brill), aiming at a researcher’s audience. The Yearbook presents data in sets tables and scholarly articles spanning social science, demography, history, and geography. Each issue offers findings, sources, methods, and implications surrounding international religious demography. Each year an assessment is made of new data made available since the previous issue of the yearbook.
Abstract
This essay offers a comparative analysis of aspects of classical Chinese philosophy with those of Reformational (Neo-Calvinist) philosophy. Such aspects form a shared root in prioritizing temporal experience (over abstract reasoning) and conceptualizing the entirety of reality as contingent and relationally dependent. At the same time, however, what marks the divergence between the two philosophies is the underlying assumptions as to what this integral reality points toward – a directionality that is critical to meaning and being. For classical Chinese philosophy, the source and meaning of reality is found within reality itself, not beyond it, construing such reality not as independent and self-contained but necessary and sufficient. This conflicts with the notion of reality as contingent and dependent. From a Reformational perspective, on the other hand, reality (i.e., all of creation) is constituted as it stands in relation to an independent and necessary Creator. The crux of Reformational philosophy is that the origin and meaning of all reality must point outside of itself to its origin in God.
Abstract
Theology and philosophy are strange bedfellows: although they share many similar interests and constantly influence each other, their relationship is fraught with suspicion or even enmity. This problem is especially acute for those who want to harmonize their commitment to sola Scriptura with the use of philosophy in their theology. Drawing insights from Herman Bavinck’s Neo-Calvinist worldview, I argue that this apparent competition is mainly caused by the failure to recognize the organic unity between both disciplines. Without theology, all disciplines would be meaningless, but without philosophy, all disciplines would be unintelligible. Portraying the harmony between theology and philosophy depends on the success of locating the difference and relationship between the universality of theology and that of philosophy. Further, the organicity that suffuses all things and affirms the primacy of special revelation reflects the Neo-Calvinist belief in both sola Scriptura and the sacredness of all vocations.
Abstract
This article aims to retrieve Abraham Kuyper’s theology to develop Reformed theology in mainland China. It shall argue that Kuyper’s concern about the varying contexts where theology is practiced shows an underdeveloped proto-Reformed contextual theology. Nonetheless, his idea of common grace serves as a conceptual apparatus through which his proto-Reformed contextual theology can underpin the construction of Sino-Reformed theology, a Reformed theology that is organically united with the history of Christianity while taking root in Chinese culture and interacting closely with the Chinese context. Such a contextualised Reformed theology can make Reformed faith an indigenous plant in the garden of Chinese Christianity on the one hand and prove conducive to the development of an organic Reformed community and theology on the other.
Abstract
This article brings Bavinck and Pannenberg into dialogue and comparison on the theme of history. Despite the differences in their theological and social context, Bavinck and Pannenberg both seek to integrate history with theology while striving to overcome the dualism that has dichotomized history and faith since the Enlightenment. They share a common debt to the varieties of modern thought. Bavinck and Pannenberg provide modern theology with a valuable perspective on how theology might become more open and scientific in response to the difficulties posed by historical studies.
Abstract
Theology and philosophy are strange bedfellows: although they share many similar interests and constantly influence each other, their relationship is fraught with suspicion or even enmity. This problem is especially acute for those who want to harmonize their commitment to sola Scriptura with the use of philosophy in their theology. Drawing insights from Herman Bavinck’s Neo-Calvinist worldview, I argue that this apparent competition is mainly caused by the failure to recognize the organic unity between both disciplines. Without theology, all disciplines would be meaningless, but without philosophy, all disciplines would be unintelligible. Portraying the harmony between theology and philosophy depends on the success of locating the difference and relationship between the universality of theology and that of philosophy. Further, the organicity that suffuses all things and affirms the primacy of special revelation reflects the Neo-Calvinist belief in both sola scriptura and the sacredness of all vocations.
Abstract
Christianity has had and continues to have elements of physical this worldly majesty, and one can find ample examples of the collusion of the state with faith but, arguably, it is not a polity for power. It is a way that invites people to follow Christ in his redemptive suffering for others. Islam too, has the Meccan phase of powerless witness. Its phase as a polity began in Medina. Muhammad in Mecca was an embodiment of prophetic service, accompanied by suffering. He would have seen himself as a prophet like Moses (and others). This changed with the ensuing battles for the faith and his emergence as a powerful statesman in Medina and beyond. However, it would be facile to characterise Islam as a whole in terms of polity or majesty, just as it would be superficial to portray Christianity merely in terms of servanthood or meekness. Islam has not been devoid of examples of service and sacrifice, just as Christianity is not bereft of power. This special issue of ijac focuses not only on what is arguably essential to both faiths but also provides examples from history and lived experiences and expressions. This issue aims to dwell on a nuanced discourse that contextually connects both faiths.
Abstract
This paper highlights a context where Christians lived under Muslim rule. Muslim critique of Christianity was widespread, and Christians had to react to Muslim dominance by finding ways of responding to criticisms without incurring punishment for rebellious attitudes to their rulers. In the first two centuries after the Arab conquest of the largely Christian Middle East, Muslims viewed Christians as needing correction for their mistaken beliefs about the oneness of God in their deviant Trinity, about the humanity of Jesus in their insistence on his divine status, about the death of Jesus by crucifixion when this had not happened, and for their failure to recognise the finality of the Prophet Muḥammad in their suppression of testimony to his coming in the Bible. Christians viewed Muslims as heretics who had diverted from the true Christian faith in the Trinity and the divinity and crucifixion of Jesus and who looked for prophecies of Muḥammad in the Bible that did not exist. Muslims and Christians searched each other’s scriptures to persuade the other that their interpretations might need correcting. As the centuries passed in the Middle East, Christians steadily embraced Islam. By the time of the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century, the vast majority of the population were Muslims.