mehdi azadparvr
Abstract
Understanding the divine attributes and clarifying their meaning accurately has always been one of the challenges of Islamic thinkers. Through distinguishing between concept and instance, Mulla Sadra tried to devise a method through which he could foreground the cognitivity of divine attributes without ...
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Understanding the divine attributes and clarifying their meaning accurately has always been one of the challenges of Islamic thinkers. Through distinguishing between concept and instance, Mulla Sadra tried to devise a method through which he could foreground the cognitivity of divine attributes without making them equal to creatures’ attributes. From Mulla Sadra’s point of view, God’s attributes like knowledge, power, eternal-living and agency are similar to existence as a universal fact which applies to all beings. In some passages, Mulla Sadra denies the conceptual synonymy of the divine attributes, and in some others, he accepts it. This difference can be attributed to the oneness and unity of God, the Almighty. According to Mulla Sadra in relation to God’s predicative attributes, one should pay attention to the essence of meaning. This method, which is the method of science advocates, does not lead to meaning interpretation of the verses of the Qur'an and does not contradict the form of the verses. It, in fact, complements the literal meaning.
zahra mousavi bayei; seyedMuhammad Mousavi
Abstract
According to Islamic philosophers, knowing the Supreme Being is one of the highest level of human spiritual perfection. Knowing the Supreme Being involves different dimensions. One aspect of knowing God is knowing His attributes correctly. Adopting a descriptive-analytical method, the present article ...
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According to Islamic philosophers, knowing the Supreme Being is one of the highest level of human spiritual perfection. Knowing the Supreme Being involves different dimensions. One aspect of knowing God is knowing His attributes correctly. Adopting a descriptive-analytical method, the present article attempts to answer the question: Is it legitimate to describe the Supreme Being with attributes of the act? In order to answer this question, we define the meaning of attributes of the act, explain the context and factors contributing to belief in such attributes, present the interpretation of the Islamic philosophers of these attributes and the limitations of this theory and finally, offer an acceptable view. The result of the study of the"theory of attributes of the act" reveals that although the Supreme Being is described by some attributes of the act, the way these attributes are understood firstly is rooted in popular interpretation of some early narrators, and secondly is subject to some significant criticism like weakness and deficiency of the Almighty Allah. A survey of the interpretations of the Islamic philosophers from these narrations shows that they do not necessarily require the acceptance of attributes of the act. Besides, there are some narrations that show some attributes of the act like Creator, All-provider, etc. are exact representation of the Essence of God.
