Davar-Elohyim, Lógos, Kalamū-Allāh. God’s Word According to the Abrahamic Religions’ Founding Sacred Texts
Davar-Elohyim, Lógos, Kalamū-Allāh. God’s Word According to the Abrahamic Religions’ Founding Sacred Texts

Summary/Abstract: This article explores, from an Abrahamic comparative perspective, the theology of the Word of God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Out of a multitude of references to davar-Elohyim in the Torah, Psalm LXVIII, v. 11 should be distinguished as a statement about the divine matrix of the languages. John the Apostle founded the christology of the Word on the semantic homogeneity of davar-Elohyim and Lógos (Gospel according to John, 1, 1-5). According to Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215)’s theological thinking, the Son-Lógos acts in accordance with the Father’s will, and is identified with the divine creative omnipotence. Origen (c. 185-254) considered that the emanation of the Son-Lógos from the Father cannot be understood as analogous to the emission of the human language, but as ontological identity to the divine substance, thus foretelling the christology of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (325-381). Aurelianus Augustinus (354-430), the bishop of Hippo, conceived the Son-Lógos from the perspective of the numerical identity of divine substance in the Persons of the Trinity. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Vth-VIth centuries) treated on the divine Lógos in two texts of the Corpus Areopagiticum: chapter VII of De divinis nominibus and chapter V of De mistica theologia. In order to complete the monotheistic perspective on God’s Word in the three Abrahamic religions, the Islamic notion of kalamū-Allāh will be outlined according to the text of the Qur’ān: Sura III (House of ‘Imrān), v. 40 (39), reveals the divine announcement about the birth of Jesus son of Mary (‘Īsā Ibn Maryam) as a Word from God or a Word of the Truth (qawl al-1aqq) and Messiah (al-Masī1); Sura IV (Women), v. 169 (171), includes a re-writing of the qur’ānic christology; Sura X (Jonah), v. 34 (33), includes the antagonism between the preaching of God’s Word in the world and the godless ones; Sura X (Jonah), v. 65 (64), postulates the immutability of God’s words as a manifestation of His omnipotence, as the linguistically and ontologically creative triumph of the divine presence; Sura X (Jonah), v. 75-82, describes the dispute between Moses and Aaron, on the one hand, and the Pharaoh, accompanied by the sorcerers summoned to his court, on the other hand; Sura X (Jonah), v. 95-96, opposes the real reality of God’s word, reminisced in the earthly realm through the divine signs, to the unreal reality of human disbelief, sanctioned by the apocalyptical punishment of the Day of Judgment; The same ruthless divine ethics of destruction and malediction as retribution for the sin of faithlessness and disregard of the divine messages uttered by the Messengers is present in Sura XVII (The night journey), v. 16; The creative power of God’s Word mirrors the created substance of the universe through the ontological influx of the divine language, the infinite reality of God’s Word is symbolized by the metaphor of the “sea of ink”, comprised in Sura XVIII (The Cave), v. 109. The Qur’ānic texts quoted above highlight five theological-semantic concepts that define the reception of the notion of God’s Word in the Islamic tradition: Jesus son of Mary revealed as a Word of Allāh; the Qur’ān, as the divine message which succeeds the Torah and the Gospel, imparted to the human race through a Messenger-Prophet (rasūl-nabī); concurrently, God’s Word is the only word endowed with real ontological power, while the insane words of the false prophets are just fake brilliance that deceives the eyes and endangers both soul and mind, tempting the human beings to fall into faithlessness and sinfulness; God’s Word has on his side divine justice and divine mercy, which balance his violence and manifest the rational, justified exigency of the Abrahamic monotheistic God, Who astounds in His destructive, punishing, revengeful hypostasis; the parable of the “sea of ink” can be interpreted as a cosmic ordering, through God’s Word and the divine writing, of the primordial aquatic chaos.

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