PhD Thesis

WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH AND SAID NURSI ON FAITH CONVERGENCES AND DIVERGENCES

Faith constitutes the most fundamental aspect of human religious experience and it hasarguably been challenged the most in modern times. This dissertation attempts to analyze andinterpret what faith signifies, how it functions and how it relates to being religious,particularly in the modern context, through a comparative analysis of the ideas of two modernthinkers, a Christian and a Muslim. It provides a panoramic and synoptic reading of twoscholars in whose writings ‘faith’ emerged as the key concept for their whole thinking,namely Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000), the Canadian scholar of Islam and comparativereligion, and Said Nursi (1876-1960), the Ottoman-Kurdish-Turkish scholar and the initiatorof a notable Islamic movement. This study critically examines their ideas of faith, scrutinizestheir convergences and divergences as well as tries to explore the message that they intendedto give to their modern audience.Smith and Nursi came from quite distinct backgrounds, developed different carriers and wereconcerned with dissimilar topics. There is, moreover, no convincing evidence showing thatthey had known each other though both similarly appealed to certain aspects of Muslimtheology (i.e. post-formative medieval kalām), spirituality (i.e. certain Sufi mystics) andlinguistics (i.e. verbal quality of Arabic). Divergences are hence more recognizable,particularly in their respective approaches to God, revelation and eschatology, which, in turn,constitute diverging metaphysical visions. Nevertheless, this study suggests that the twoscholars can indeed be considered as partners of a genuine and fruitful dialogue. Aconverging vision is observable where both interpreted faith existentially and presented it in away that modern believers can better view its prime role for an authentic religious experience.The extensive textual analyses in this dissertation discover that their converging vision onfaith is better traced back to their direct experience of the modern Muslim trauma and theirscrutiny of it. This scrutiny led both to a similar questioning of the modern (mis)perception ofreligion. For Smith and Nursi, modern understanding of religion was particularly flawed bythe loss of the sense of the divine/transcendence and the concomitant dismissal of thesignificance of human-divine interaction. To challenge it, they similarly pursued a criticalengagement with the modern condition, unlike many other fellows. They tried to retrieve andrestore the transcendental element in human life in a manner that could be relevant andcommunicable in the modern context. Their common proposal was (re-) introduction of‘faith’ as a persistent, operative, living and indispensable divine-human relationship.While the emphasis in Smith is more on the human side of this relationship, it is on the divineside in Nursi. Yet they particularly converge in their deliberate attempt to construe faith as adynamic nexus between theos and anthropos whereby the two is put in connection and not inmutual exclusivity. This attempt, the dissertation proposes, is best portrayed with a conicmodel in Nursi and an elliptical or parabolic model in Smith. Their non-centric schemescharacterize a new sort of theological anthropology that challenges both the pre-moderntheocentric and modern anthropocentric mindset. As such, both can be positioned within thewider theological current that emerged in Europe in early twentieth century.This study identifies three points where their respective understandings of faith converge,even sometimes overlap: i) Faith is indispensable for human authenticity and crucial toachieve human fulfillment; ii) Faith is a total self-commitment and involves the wholepersonhood. It, hence, cannot be reduced merely into an intellectual expression or credo. iii)Faith is fundamentally a personal experience and corresponds to a deep, ongoing and vividengagement with the divine reality. It is, hence, less to do with ideology, formal entity,system or doctrine.This study finally questions the practical implications of the two thinkers’ concept of faith. Itargues that their converging existential interpretation bears inherent and strong challengesagainst Islamism which emerged as a modern phenomenon where a transcendental idea(l)turned into a strict mundane ideology. It also discusses the implications of their idea of faithin addressing the contemporary religious plurality.

Author: Pektaş, Şerafettin

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2015
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Thesis
Doctoral
KU LEUVEN UNIVERSITY
Islamic Studies
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Conference_Venue: 10060
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Pektas [2015] PhD Thesis on Smith and Nursi on Faith.pdf