Transformative Readings of the Sacred Scriptures: International Christian - Muslim Consultation on Hermeneutics

Sacred scriptures are crucial reference points for religious communities. They project meaning to and provide orientation for believers in their relationship with God and the world. For Christians and Muslims, scriptural interpretation is an important tool in order to understand God’s will. Within each community, intense theological debate about how to understand divine revelation takes place. 

The questions of how to transmit the divine message across different generations and how to communicate it in diverse contexts have been widely discussed, both theoretically and practically. These questions touch on the complex relationship between text, tradition and context. These questions are not dealt with in isolation from other religious communities. Interaction takes place, both at the scholarly and at the grass-roots levels. It occurs either in reaction to or cooperation with other religious communities and outside readers.

General hermeneutical explorations become most tangible by looking at specific topical questions together. It is most fruitful to look at how the Bible and the Qur’an deal with theological, as well as ethical issues. Currently, the following four themes are widely debated: 1) mercy/ grace; 2) violence; 3) gender; and 4) environmental ethics.

Finally, the hermeneutical question comes back as a theological one: How does God engage with this world through sacred scripture? When and how does the reading of the sacred scriptures become transformative? What are the theological perspectives and the ethical implications?

The Lutheran World Federation is organizing this consultation, in cooperation with the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Norway, and the Center for Islamic Theology, University of Münster, Germany.

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