A Historical and Pathological Look at the Modern Theological Issues in the Iranian literature

Modern theological concepts, having their roots in the West, appeared in Persian literature when Mirza Taqi Farahani, entitiled Amir Kabir (the Great Prince) and Mirza Sepahsalar came to power, and the way was paved for the intellectuals to express their own ideas openly. Since then, these theological concepts have become controversial issues among the traditional theologians.In the realm of social sciences and politics, the first issues of major concern were ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, common law and democracy (the republican aspect of government) which were strongly supported by theologians since Constitutionalism. Certain issues like the relationship between science and religion, dialectic materialism and Marxism were added to the theological issues after Constitutionalism. The pathological study of the theologians’ position shows that most traditional theologians were not well-acquinted with the new theological issues which found their way into the traditional theological subjects and one could hardly find among them a theologian who had authority in the new theological issues put forward by the western thinkers. They attempted to deal with these new theological issues through the traditional modes of thinking and did not pay attention to the positive functions of the issues in question and even in some cases they took a contradictory position towards them.