Formulation of the Claim
In Qur’anic discourse, some beliefs, in the course of later reception, turn into theological certainties, whereas they were once open to historical and psychological reading.
Explanation
Arkoun understands this transformation as part of the history of reception, not of the original structure of discourse alone. Belief does not appear here as a closed form from the outset, but as a meaning that was gradually fixed until it became a certainty transcending the conditions of its emergence.
In this sense, the distinction emerges between the possibility of a historical and psychological understanding of beliefs and what later readings make of them by tightening and stabilizing them. The transformation occurs not only in the content of faith itself, but in the way it is received and formulated within a theological discourse that consolidates what was originally more open.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom is connected to the book’s effort to uncover the layers that accumulated over Qur’anic discourse in its later course, and to highlight what historical and anthropological analysis makes possible in reconsidering the formation of religious meanings. It is close to Arkoun’s theses that distinguish between the text as an open discourse and the modes of reception that turned it into more rigid systems.
Limits of the Claim
This atom does not mean that all beliefs underwent the same process, nor that it denies the presence of faith from the beginning. It also does not provide a detailed account of every mechanism of transformation; rather, it simply points to the passage of some meanings from interpretive openness to the form of certainty.