Responsible Dominion and Responsible Knowledge for man: Reading the Account of Adam’s Creation in the Bible and the Qur’an

There are several mentions of man gifted dominion and knowledge by God, both in the Qur’an and the Bible, but it is important to notice that this advantages for man are not absolute and are bringing responsibility. The main question of this research is inquiring those conditions and responsibilities through re-reading the relevant verses of the Qur’an and the Bible. The approach of this article is comparative theology of Abrahamic sacred books and the methods used are those common in lexical etymology. The core sentence of the article is the fact that both in the Qur’an and the Bible, the power and dominion of man, as well as knowledge gifted is conditioned to be used in just and responsible way. Then the man has to response to God regarding all the privileges given to him/her and only in this way, one can perform his/her role as caliph of God according to the Qur’an or image of God according to the Bible.

Keywords:

Quranic anthropology , Biblical Anthropology , comparative theology , caliph of God , Image of God , man’s responsibility