Levels of Faith in Mullā Ṣadrā’s Transcendent Philosophy and Stages of the Growth of Faith in Fowler’s View

Mullā Ṣadrā has discussed the levels of faith based on the principles of the Transcendent Philosophy, particularly the trans-substantial motion and gradation of the levels of existence, Man, and knowledge. He divides faith sometimes into imitative, demonstrative, and obvious types and sometimes into external and true, verbal, semantic, real (demonstrative or unveiled) and drowning into the light of oneness types. In his view, the highest level of faith belongs to masters of theoretical and practical intellect, only a few of whom reach the level of divine vicegerency and the perfect Man. James Fowler, the contemporary theologist and psychologist, explains the growth of faith at six stages: 1) intuitive projective faith, 2) mythic-literal faith, 3) synthetic-conventional, 4) individuative reflective faith, 5) conjunctive faith, and global faith. He does so under the influence of certain modern Christian theologians, such as Tillich, and psychologists, such as Piaget, Kohlberg, and Erikson. Fowler believes that figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa exemplify the sixth level of faith in the light of their cognitive and moral breadth of insight. Here, following a descriptive analytic method, the authors initially explain Mullā Ṣadrā’s view regarding the levels of faith and Fowler’s view of the stages of the growth of faith and then compare, contrast, and evaluate the two views.