نشریه کلام اسلامی
پیاپی 89 (بهار 1393)

A historiography that is free of personal inclinations will be effective. Nonetheless, historians of creeds and sects generally acted negligently in demonstrating others’ believes. For instance, the accounts presented by Sahrestani’s Milal van-Nihal (creeds and sects), Abdurrahman Melti’s “at-Tanbih var-Radd ala Ahlil Ahva’ val Bida’” (the awakening and the response to the people of desire and heresy) and Baghdadi’s “al-Farghu baynal Firagh” (the difference between the sects) about Shiite theological School, indicate to a kind of biased presentation. Based on these biased presentations and making various accusations and following people like Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah, some orientalists like Adam Mez and Dr. Sami introduced Shi’a as it owes its theology to the Mutazelites, while the study of the sources of both schools shows that the intellectual and doctrinal roots of the both stem from one origin which can be found in sayings of the commander of the faithful, Imam Ali (p.h). Furthermore, the view of people like Ibn Taymiyyah according to which, some ideas like “purifying God from all attributes of creatures and Justice” have entered Shiite theology in Shaykh Mufid’s time will be proved baseless, by cases of works of theologians of second and third century. While Shia and Mutazelite share ideas like God’s purification of corporeality, negation of determinism, there are many differences like judgment about grave sinner, intercession and etc. between them. Hence, regarding what these two groups have in common, the both have a common origin that can be found in Imam Ali’s sayings.

The problem of evils is one of ancient challenges in relation to the belief in one, omniscient, wise and benevolent God. While dualists have regarded the existence of evils as inconsistent with the Attributes of Perfection, they have believed for the evils in a creator other than God. Criticizing the view of the dualists, theologians have presented some answers and solutions. Nonexistence of evil, fewness of evils comparing to the goods, indispensability of evils for the existence of goods, necessity of a general and comprehensive view of the world instead of a partial case-viewing one, cognitive and non-cognitive profits of evils for human, are some solutions that theologians have presented about evils and answered to the dualists’ doubts. These solutions and answers have been explained and analyzed in the present article.

The problem of rationality is always one of challenging issues among different Islamic and even non-Islamic theological and philosophical schools. Different environment and conditions prevailing over each school of thought and resulting in deferent readings and interpretations, involved some people in excess and some other in deficit. Choosing the side of excess, Muhammad Arkoun elevated the dignity of reason to the extent of absolute sovereignty over human’s life and regarded the inattention to it as one of the main reasons of the decadence of the Muslims. He takes advantage of two methods of critique and comparative to perform his scientific mission in the critique of Islamic reason. According to him, the defaults of religious reason like trans-historicity, having mythic role, inconsistence with the faith, fanaticism, dogmatism and etc. caused Muslim’s decadence and backwardness. His understanding of religious reason in the frame of the dominant reason in the Islamic word and his inattention to the characteristics, merits and functions of the rationality of the original Islam ended in his mistake in critique of religious reason.

Nobody has disputed the importance of the issue of Divine Attributes among theological matters and almost all books written on theology have engaged the discussions about it. Divine Attributes have several dimensions that attracted the attention of thinkers who studied and discussed them among which is the discussion about those attributes that their mere existence and affirmation for God is doubtful and are posed as “controversial attributes”. One of these attributes is “the attribute of genesis”. Maturidites defend the affirmation of this attribute for God and consider it as a real self-subsistent attribute while other known denominations deny it. The proofs demonstrated by Maturidites on their claim are deficient. It seems that at least one concern of Abu Mansour Maturidi in posing the attribute of genesis was the problem of relating the temporal to the eternal. Like the philosophers who turned to the intermediary of intellects to solve the mentioned problem, he was looking for an intermediary through which relates the temporal to the eternal essence of God. According to his view, the only attribute that can undertake such a role is the attribute of genesis. But his endeavor in demonstrating this solution is in vein. This theory caused problems in his way from which he can not escape.

Sadiduddin al-Himmasi and Ibn Meitham al-Bahrani have lived in two close ages and both have been invited to the school of Hillah to teach theological issues. These two remarkable Shiite theologians used the rational method and took advantage of “the esoteric interpretation” for solving the problem of conflict between reason and transmission (naql) with a difference that unlike Sadiduddin al-Himmasi and like Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Ibn Maitham al-Bahrani had a philosophical approach. Beside, while both were not negligent in referring to the transmitted arguments but al-Himmasi benefitted from Qur’anic verses and narrations more than Ibn Maitham. Neither of them, gives authority to single narration in the field of religious believes. Sadiduddin a-Himmasi has referred to consensus in some doctrinal issues while there is not such a reference in Ibn Maitham’s works. Ibn Maitham accepts intuitional method partially but al-Himmasi did not engage in intuitional method and its status in the book “al-Munqiz”.

Power has two known meanings; one of which is “validity of action and abandonment”. What is meant here by validity is contingency; some possibilities have been posed about the meaning of contingency like essential contingency, contingency in relation to another, occurring contingency, potential contingency. Although these possibilities can be applied to human’s power but is not applicable to Divine Power. Nevertheless, general contingency is not in the category of the possibilities of contingency in the mentioned definition. The other definition is “agent’s being in a way that acts if it wants and abandons if it wants. This definition is applicable to the both. These two definitions do not have mutual implication in “Divine Power”. Regarding the fact that Divine Will is from the attributes of the acts, the more suitable definition of “Divine Power” is “the fundamentality of transcendental necessary being for the origination of the world on the basis of the creative foreknowledge to the best world and will”.

Methodology has found a remarkable status among the thinkers of different sciences including the researchers of religious sciences in the contemporary time. There are different linguistic theories about the theological statements that can be divided into two approaches of non-cognitive conceptualism and cognitive conceptualism. The holders of the second approach are divided to two groups of non-literalists and literalists concerning the statements that speak of God. Studying later Wittgenstein’s theory of language games from the first approach, john Hick’s “mythic language” from the first group of the second approach, William Alston’s “purified language” and Mulla Sadra’s “commonality of meaning [of existence] and existential gradation” from the literalists and demonstrating the methodological results of Sadraian view, the present article concluded that the only reliever theory in the realm of theological language is Mulla Sadra’s theory.