The Meaning of "Negation of Attributes"in Shiite Teachings from the Perspective of Sayyed Ahmad Karbalai and Sayyid Muhammad Husein Tabatabai

In the Shia sources of traditions, some hadiths consider the doctrine of negation of the Attributes as the most perfect form of monotheism and the system of monotheism. These narrations have been interpreted in different ways. For instance, Mulla Sadra and the commentators of his works try to apply these narrations to the theory of denotational objectivity, but some Shiite scholars, such as Sayyed Ahmad Karbalai and Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Tabatabai argue that these narrations are mainly concerned with the meaning of the theory of objectivity. In his correspondence with Sheikh Mohammad Hossein Esfahani and Allameh Tabatabai, Sayyed Ahmad Karbalai uses a mystical approach to discuss this subject in various works and through presenting rational proof and scrutinizing narrative evidence, proves the reasonability of his theory. After classifying and analyzing various interpretations of these traditions, this paper attempts to prove that among the views of Muslim scholars, the mystical interpretation of the mentioned traditions (especially the one with the assertion of Allameh Tabatabai) is more consistent with the doctrines of the Shia leaders about the relationship between the Divine Essence and Attributes.