javad nazari; shamsollah seraj; majid ziaei
Abstract
Denying any resemblances between the creator and creatures, Qazi Saeed Qomi sets his ideas apart from the typical cataphatic theology in Islamic discourse as well as the conventional theology of Shi’ism. This paper aims at investigating the relationship or lack of it between Qazi Saeed Qomi’s ...
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Denying any resemblances between the creator and creatures, Qazi Saeed Qomi sets his ideas apart from the typical cataphatic theology in Islamic discourse as well as the conventional theology of Shi’ism. This paper aims at investigating the relationship or lack of it between Qazi Saeed Qomi’s apophatic theology and the conventional predominant monotheistic perspectives of main schools of theology (i.e., Ash’arism, Mu’tazila, Shi’ism). Qazi Saeed’s theology is very different from the common rational theology of Ash’arites or Shi’ites, both of which emphasize the congruities between the creator and creatures. Although differentiating the aforementioned ideas appears to be difficult, unlike other theologists, Qazi Saeed does not believe in the theory of substituting the essence for attribute. In spite of the fact that at the first sights, Qazi Qomi’s theology brings a resemblance to rational-narrative-apophatic theological thoughts (e.g., al-Shaykh al-Saduq’s narrative-apophatic theology), our argument is that his ideas are reliant on the theoretical mystical thought (although they are still different in some ways). Qazi Qomi’s theology has been influenced by the theoretical mystical thought in terms of the following issues: believing in personal unity of existence, negating congruities between the essence and its manifestations, negating God’s essence from his attributes and believing in confinement of God’s names and attributes. The most considerable difference between them is that mystic theologists believe in being qua being principle, while Qazi Saeed Qomi fails even to accept this principle.
shamsollah seraj; javad nazari; majid ziaei
Abstract
According to Sa’id Qumi’s negative theology, God has no attributes, neither essential nor non-essential, and there is no congruity between Him and His creatures. Therefore, the words attributed to the Creator and creatures are affirmative for creatures, but negative for the Creator. As an ...
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According to Sa’id Qumi’s negative theology, God has no attributes, neither essential nor non-essential, and there is no congruity between Him and His creatures. Therefore, the words attributed to the Creator and creatures are affirmative for creatures, but negative for the Creator. As an example, His existence is synonymous with His not being non-existent. Therefore, we do not have any understanding except the negative one. However, the affirmative understanding of the Creator leads to divesting God of His attributes. This article aims to examine Sa’id Qumi’s solutions and to evaluate whether his solution logically eliminate the issue of divesting God of His attributes. Sa’id Qumi has proposed four solutions: (1) Replacement of positive knowledge with the negative one; (2) Propounding God as attribute Endower, not the endowed; (3) God has essential reality which is not the subject to our perceptual powers; (4) The replacement of negative understanding of titles and attributes with positive understanding of the Creator’s essence. Rational evaluation shows no solution can eliminate the issue of divesting God of His attributes in Sa’id Qumi monotheistic thought.
