Analogies across Faiths

Abstract

Joshua Ralston frankly acknowledges Barth’s dismissive comments about Islam and the possibility of Muslim-Christian dialogue. Despite these comments, Ralston seeks to engage Barth as a conversation partner in comparative theological work by placing his dialectical understanding of revelation as the veiling and unveiling of God in conversation with Ash’arite Sunni thinking about God and revelation, specifically Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Al-Maqsad al-Asna (The 99 Beautiful Names of God). Both theologians affirm the particularity of revelation that comes only from God, and both reject the possibilities of any analogy of being (analogia entis). For both, to speak rightly about God is emphatically to speak “after revelation”—so analogy and reason may be used, but only in light of what God has first revealed (in Jesus Christ or in the Qur’an).