A Critical Study of Tabrizi’s Traditional Evidence on the Homonymity of Existence and the Denial of Divine Attributes

Mulla Rajab Ali Tabriz is one of the thinkers of the Safavid era and contemporary of Mullā Ṣadrā. On several occasions, he has opposed the principles and foundations of Ṣadrā’s Transcendent philosophy. One of his oppositions is the issue of existence univocality. Tabrizi has strongly opposed the univocality of existence and has tried to prove its homonymity with various arguments. As for the Divine Attributes, he has also denied the attributes by referring to traditions (hadiths). In the present article, by examining these two issues, the weakness of Tabrizi arguments is made known. The drawbacks of Tabrizi’s view are as follows: interpreting narrations without considering the atmosphere and context of the time they were issued, ignoring the connected and separate indications in understanding their true meaning, disregarding narrations that have offered a completely affirmative interpretation of Divine Attributes, the fact that some traditions are irrelevant to this debate but are related to conditionality of the Divine Names and Attributes.