The Semantics of God's Attributes From the Perspectives of Abd al-Jabbar al-Mutazili and William P. Alston

Religious language is one of the most important and attractive issues in the philosophy of religion. This subject is very significant to pious people، since it concerns the meanings and semantics of the God’s attributes; and the statements about God are rational، provided that they are meaningful. In general، there are two fundamental questions in this field: A) Are the statements about God meaningful or not? B) In case of being meaningful، is it possible for human being to perceive them or not? This article is focusing on the Qazi Abd-al-jabbar Mu’tazili’s and William P. Alston’s responses to the questions mentioned above. Although they belong to two different schools of thought and era، on the semantics of the attributes of perfection such as knowledge، power، etc. and the attributes of act e. g. perceiving، making and so on، they have the same view which can be called “functionalism”.