The place of God and Human in Islamic Doctrine of Salvation, with an Emphasis on Shiite Perspective

To explicate the salvation perspectives of the theological denominations, it should be investigated that whether human salvation in the hereafter world is regarded as a human right or a Divine gift and also whether this is related to human worldly wisdom or to Divine eternal destiny. Then, the position of God and human in salvation doctrine of a school could be determined correctly. Study and analysis of the history of theological thoughts indicate that the response of Islamic theology to these questions could be divided and introduced in three perspectives: 1. Asharite’s God-centered perspective; 2. Mu’tazilite`s human-centered perspective; and 3. Shiite’s God-human-centered perspective. This paper is an attempt to introduce these three perspectives in brief and explicates the intellectual principles of each one and finally preferability of Shiite’s compound perspective (God-human-centered perspective) has been explained.