https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/ Practical Theology en daily 1 Fri, 21 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0330 Fri, 21 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0330 https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_239682.html Social, cultural, and epistemological transformations in the contemporary world have posed significant challenges to traditional theological frameworks, which often lack the capacity to analyze the complexity of lived religious experience. This article, adopting an emergent theology approach, seeks to demonstrate that faith and religious practice are dynamic, contextual, and emergent phenomena that can only be understood through the complex interaction of the individual, society, tradition, and cultural and historical contexts. Based on the philosophical and scientific principles of emergence, beliefs, rituals, ethical actions, and spiritual experience cannot be analyzed merely as the sum of isolated components; rather, new, non-linear, and emergent properties appear at the level of the religious system. Emergent theology, as a theoretical framework and an operational program, enables the analysis of religion in the real lives of human beings. This approach frees theology from the limitations of purely theoretical analysis and makes possible a participatory and lived understanding of religion and spirituality. It also highlights the role of social and cultural contexts in the emergence of religious meaning and practice. The findings indicate that an emergent-based practical theology not only redefines the relationship between faith and practice but also offers a methodological and conceptual framework for analyzing the dynamic and transformative dimensions of contemporary religious life. This approach opens a new path for rethinking spirituality, lived experience, and religious practices in the modern world. https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_234259.html The belief of some eco-theologians is that the theologies of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Christianity, are highly anthropocentric, and this has created a context for the destruction of the environment by humans. An "anthropocentric" approach also exists in Islamic theology, and to improve the behavior of Muslims in environmental conservation as much as possible, it must be critiqued and revised so that it can move closer to an environmental theology. To understand the status and position of humankind in Islamic theology, one must first refer to the Holy Quran and examine how it speaks about "human." This research is the first to descriptively examine the word "human" in the Holy Quran, and its analytical approach in critiquing anthropocentric teachings is also distinct and new. The Quran's approach when using the word "human" is not to praise them, but rather to reproach them and remind them of their weaknesses, shortcomings, and undesirable characteristics. The traits and words used for humans include: very unjust and ignorant, weak, very despairing, greedy, ungrateful, and so on. From these attributes and characteristics that the Holy Quran uses for humankind, it can be concluded that God, in this way, familiarizes humans with humility and modesty, and distances them from arrogance and self-importance. As a result, religious people should avoid self-centeredness, domination, and superiority in their practical ethics and their interaction with other creations of nature. https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_239676.html Understanding the presence of God plays a fundamental role in shaping individual identity and spiritual development. Conceptual images serve as cognitive tools through which individuals experience and perceive God, often reflected in various cultural and psychological forms—especially personal narratives. These narratives can reveal students’ emotional constructs of God and offer insights into their educational and social formation. As future mothers, fathers, and active members of society, students’ perceptions of God—whether joyful or fearful—are closely tied to their lived experiences and influence their personal and communal lives. This study aims to explore the educational function of joyful and fearful constructs of God in the narratives of 11th-grade female students from the northern and southern districts of Tehran. Using a narrative inquiry approach and a descriptive-analytical method, the study analyzes written narratives collected through random sampling. The findings show that many students describe God’s presence in their lives through joyful attributes. The joyful construct appeared 74 times, surpassing the fearful construct, which was recorded 49 times. These results suggest that emphasizing the joyful aspects of divine imagery may foster a more harmonious and effective understanding of God’s presence among students. https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_239679.html Regarding various changes in social, political, cultural and religious situations of the last two centuries, conducted to different viewpoints of the status of scriptures, particularly in defining women’s roles and their moral issues. The Christian scriptures, both theoretically and practically, is regarded as authoritative and normative in defining this gendered ethic. This research seeks to examine the ethical systems of Old and New Testament, in order to explore key concepts such as the marked differences in how law, commandments, and moral principles are defined in each text. Also regarding biblical criticism, Christian feminists major perspectives who by reinterpreting and critically assessing the ethical system of the Bible, especially narrations of Saint Paul’s, have sought to correlate the ethical principles of the two Testaments according to modern life be studied. These scholars have offered a renewed framework for women’s moral life. While emphasizing the physical and emotional characteristics of women in the sphere of individual life, they argue that women, aware of their autonomy over their own bodies, can play an effective role in social engagement. https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_238389.html This study aimed to measure psychological capital of seminary students and to investigate the reliability and validity of a general scale of psychological capital among a group of seminary students. In doing so, 314 seminary students filled out “the Revised Compound PsyCap Scale” along Subjective Happiness Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and Self-Esteem Scale. Results showed that Cronbach's alpha of the psychological scale was at .89. Correlations of this scale with happiness, life satisfaction, and self-esteem were moderate to strong showing convergent reliability of the scale. There were not any significant differences between the sexes in psychological capital. However married individuals scored higher than unmarried individuals in psychological capital. Also, level of psychological capital of seminary students was higher than three samples from other countries. This study introduced a valid and reliable psychological capital scale to Iranian scholars and depicted the status of psychological capital in a group of Islamic seminary students. https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_239680.html This study explores the types and degrees of human love according to Teresa of Ávila, aiming to introduce her mystical thought to contemporary scholars. It is based on the assumption that if human love culminates in agape—self-giving or divine love—one may also experience transcendent divine affection. The topic is significant since Teresa of Ávila remains relatively unfamiliar in Iran, where few Persian works have examined her ideas, despite her status as a foundational figure in Spanish mysticism. Her concepts such as the “four stages of prayer” and the “seven mansions” hold particular importance in the mystical tradition.The findings indicate that Teresa does not equate love with emotional intensity, tears, or divine consolations. Instead, she defines it as sincere service to God, patience, and humility. Without presenting a systematic classification, she discusses various forms of love, rejecting erotic, possessive, and carnal ones. While she offers no explicit view on romantic love between men and women, she accepts philia (friendly love), ideal love, and the love manifested in nature. Among all, agape stands as the highest and most genuine form, to which she consistently calls her fellow nuns. Teresa also maintains that a lover can become aware of their own love and, after a period of reflection, assess its moral value. The discord between human and divine love, along with impiety, are regarded as major perils of human affection. https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_234261.html The developed theology of the meaning of life constitutes a coherent attempt to interpret life’s significance by integrating personal experience, moral structures, and cosmic teleology. Rooted in both philosophical and religious traditions and further shaped within contemporary philosophy of religion, it incorporates diverse models such as narrative approaches, evolutionary teleology, and the perennialist tradition. These models aim to provide a framework capable of explaining meaning at both the existential level and within a broader metaphysical and eschatological horizon. The strengths of this approach include its conceptual coherence, capacity for interdisciplinary dialogue with the natural and human sciences, intercultural adaptability, and ability to offer a unified response to the problem of evil. Nevertheless, challenges remain—among them excessive abstraction, the difficulty of substantiating a benevolent cosmic purpose, the risk of implicit exclusivism in the face of religious diversity, heavy reliance on contested metaphysical notions, and limited empirical testability. Recent scholarship indicates that many of these obstacles may be mitigated through strategies such as drawing more deeply on narrative and lived experience, employing cumulative-case reasoning, embracing open-inclusivist perspectives on religious diversity, rethinking core metaphysical premises, and engaging with the social sciences and the psychology of religion. The overall assessment suggests that, despite significant philosophical and empirical limitations, the theology of the meaning of life possesses substantial potential for self-correction and for adapting to contemporary intellectual and cultural contexts, offering a credible framework for bridging the personal and cosmic dimensions of meaning. https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_239678.html Depression is one of the psychological disorders that can be affected by a person's perception of themselves as a human being. The aim of the present study was to investigate the anthropological perspective of girls with depression. For this purpose, purposive sampling was initiated among women referring to counseling centers in Rasht in 1401 who had a history of depression according to the DSM diagnosis and continued until theoretical saturation. A total of 16 girls with a history of depression were selected and interviewed in a semi-structured manner and finally analyzed using a qualitative content analysis method. The findings showed that the anthropological perspective centered around six main categories of human nature, the purpose of life, the end of life (with subcategories of death, reaching the goal, and blackness), the source of human worth (with subcategories of attracting the attention of others, beautiful appearance, personal feeling), the criterion of action, and the origin of human existence (beginning) (with subcategories of God, evolution, and marriage). Special attention to the discovered categories, such as the source of worth and purpose of life, allows clinicians to penetrate the underlying layers of negative automatic thoughts and to bring therapy into the realm of meaning and identity. Accordingly, it is suggested that "anthropological narrative reconstruction" be taken as a complementary and powerful component in intervention packages for serious depression. Such an approach elevates the treatment of depression from the level of cognitive modification to the level of existential paradigm shift. https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_234260.html Linda Zagzebski’s moral philosophy—articulated in two complementary frameworks, Divine Motivation Theory and Exemplarist Moral Theory—offers a systematic reconstruction of religious ethics grounded in virtue, character, and moral motivation. In her earlier theory, the divine character is not merely a source of commands, but the ontological and normative foundation of value, composed of loving, wise, and benevolent motivations. This marks a decisive departure from divine command theories, where God's will determines moral value; for Zagzebski, it is the divine character that grounds the will, not the reverse. In her later exemplarist theory, ethical concepts such as “goodness,” “virtue,” and “duty” are understood not through conceptual analysis but via direct reference to paradigmatically virtuous persons and the cognitive emotion of admiration. Admiration, she argues, initiates moral understanding by directing the agent toward the motivational structure of exemplars, thereby enabling imitation and the development of one’s own character. Crucially, the theory allows for the revision of mistaken admiration and supports moral growth. Though centered on divine exemplarity as the ultimate moral ideal, the theory is designed to be accessible and epistemically fruitful even for non-theists, through its reliance on human exemplars. This paper analyzes the structural unity and philosophical implications of these theories, highlighting both their internal coherence and the epistemological, theological, and intercultural challenges they face. The article argues that Zagzebski’s model offers a viable alternative for the renewal of religious ethics in contemporary philosophy—one that is both faithful to theological tradition and responsive to the demands of reflective moral agency. https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_239681.html The illness of cancer operates beyond the physical engagements of sick children, influencing their other dimensions of health, particularly spiritual well-being, and in this process, it gives rise to unique spiritual challenges. The nature of the concept of ‘God’ and the manner of establishing a connection with Him constitute one of the primary spiritual concerns for this group of children, serving as a decisive factor in shaping their spiritual health trajectory and their Post-Traumatic Growth process. Accordingly, this research, relying on an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis method, after outlining the framework of the children’s spiritual worldview and their lived spiritual experience, examines the theistic concepts of 30 hospitalized children with cancer at Seyed al-Shohada Hospital in Isfahan Province. The findings indicate that their understanding of the divine concept can be categorized into five main classifications: Magical God, Trading God, Veiling God, Controlling God, and Meaning-Bestowing God. The manner in which each of these theistic models is perceived has a profound impact on the structure of these patients’ spiritual worldview; it can act both as a facilitator for spiritual growth and transcendence and the enhancement of spiritual well-being, and simultaneously expose them to serious spiritual conflicts and traumas https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_238385.html Traditionally, the problem of evil in its various forms has been one of the most serious problems for belief in God. A large part of the answers given to the problem of evil have mainly centered on human flourishing. In the last few decades, more attention has been paid to the suffering of animals and the philosophical problems that such suffering creates as one of the examples of evil. Theists in Abrahamic religions, by drawing a theological theodicy, try to establish compatibility between the suffering of animals and God who has the absolute attributes of knowledge, power and benevolence. There are other solutions by non-monotheistic religions, such as Hindu theodicy, which tries to justify this problem with a moral solution, regardless of preserving the oneness of God. By providing a systematic structure of the system of creation, Hindu theodicy ties the reasons why God allows animals to suffer to the agency granted to creatures and the cycle of karma, which somehow recounts what is sown in the next life. In this research, we show how a Hindu theist can respond to the problem of animal suffering according to his religious teachings. https://practicaltheology.mazaheb.ac.ir/article_238384.html someone believes in the personal unity of existence as one of the key beliefs emphasized by Sadr al-Mutalahin, meaning that he perceives the unity of beings in the world as a single being, this belief will affect his mind. Since the human mind has three dimensions: cognitive, emotional, and volitional, it can be said that such a person considers himself equal to other humans and beings in the cognitive dimension, and the world will be mysterious and full of awareness for him. But seeing oneself as equal to other beings in the emotional sphere of the human mind creates a sense of compassion and empathy, a pervasive love, and absolute peace. In the volitional sphere, such a person finds a desire for perfection in the first place and a desire for free in the second place. In this article, with a therapeutic approach and using an analytical and deductive method, we have examined the psychological effects and results of the unity of existence. Mullasadra himself has also referred to some of these effects on the human mind due to the belief in the unity of existence. These psychological effects can be used as a basis for increasing mental health, expanding peace, and environmental ethics in human society.