Metaphysics of Attributes in the Religious School of Muʿtazilites and Ashʿarites

The main issue of monotheism is how divine unity is compatible with the plurality of attributes. Hence, the question arises whether God has attributes. If God does not have attributes, then what are the revelatory attributes with which He describes Himself? If God has attributes, what is the nature of these attributes and their relation to His essence? How can one speak of the essence, attributes, and divine realm? The apophatic and analogical theologies have been formed in response to these questions, and each has led to some controversies that they have not been able to solve. Although it is possible that the separation of the truth and the metaphor according to the Muʿtazilites and in a few cases according to the Ashʿarites, can act as a temporary solution, it does not seem to be a defensible solution and requires another explanation. This descriptive-analytical study tries to express the metaphysical approach of Muʿtazilites and Ashʿarites about attributes in terms of three issues: Are attributes ontological or semantic? Are they real meanings or names and sayings? Are they divine or human? This research aims to propose a better solution by providing a new reading of Muʿtazilite approach based on the aforementioned metaphysical one. In short, although the Ashʿarites consider attributes to be entities with real and pre-linguistic meanings which God describes Himself with those, and these attributes have reached humans exclusively through revelation, investigating the Muʿtazilite approach depicts that the attributes are semantic matters which are derived from human-linguistic names and are attributed to God by humans through the reason.