The Holy Spirit as seen through the prism of Islam
Loading...
Files
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
St Petersburg State University
Abstract
The phrase “the Holy Spirit” or “the Spirit of the Holy” is mentioned four times
in the Quran. The first three cases associate it with Issa the Son of Maryam (Jesus
Christ). As the Quran says, Allah strengthened Issa by the Spirit of the Holy. In
the fourth case, the Holy Spirit is seen immediately related to the process of divine
revelation. The Quranic text, taken separately from the commentaries (tafāsīr), does
not provide any specific indications of how “the Spirit of the Holy” should be understood.
The Tafsīr of aṭ-Ṭabarī, which is the closest to the time of the Quran, gives
three versions of its meaning: the angel Jibril, the Gospel (al-Injīl) and the word by
which Issa raised the dead. Later on, the first version became dominant in the Sunni
tradition. The Shias ignored the Quranic association of the Holy Spirit with Issa
and proclaimed it the highest of the created spirits, even superior than the angels
Jibril and Mikail. This spirit at first settled itself into Muhammad, removed after
his death into Imam Ali, and then consecutively lived in all Infallible Imams until
finally being settled in Imam al-Mahdi, concealed by Allah from the humankind.
The Spirit of the Holy, according to Shias, granted Imams with the full knowledge of
everything. The erroneous Quranic conception of the Trinity as “the father, the son
and the spouse” took the notion of the Holy Spirit out of the Christian context of
the Holy Trinity. Meanwhile, the obvious association of the Holy Spirit with Christ
in the Quran serves as evidence of the Christian origin of this notion, hung in the
air in Sunni Islam and surprisingly developed into something principally new in the
Shia mystic doctrine of Imamate.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Krylov G. L. The Holy Spirit as seen through the prism of Islam. Issues of Theology, 2019, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 576–590.