فصلنامه تحقیقات کلامی
پیاپی 8 (بهار 1394)

The Muslim thinkers based faith and guidance on the knowledge of belief fundamental teachings; but, in the history of Islamic knowledge, the knowledge's characteristics, its domain and how it is gained, had been always a challenging issue. In this regard, to answer the above-mentioned questions, the Imami thinkers of the Kufan School put forward the theory of "Constraint Knowledge" on the basis of the Qur'an and the Shi'i Hadith heritage. The belief of the early Imamis was that the complete knowledge purport had been given to human beings in the previous worlds and the human being has the purport actually in his conscious. Thus, knowledge is created by God and man can't acquire it, but only must remember the purport of that knowledge. Of course, from amongst the early Imami thinkers, Hesham b. Hakam which was pioneer in the ImamiKalami discussions of that time, was trying to offer a more reasonable reading of the Imami beliefs. In order to avoid the criticisms and to open an acceptable place for "rational reason", he maintains that the actuality of the constraint knowledge depends on reasoning.

The theoretical reason is one of the reason's usages in the inference of Kalami doctrines. In this usage, reason uses specific methods and rules such as discovering the requisites, argumentation from the absent for the present, the self-evident rules (impossibility of causal cycles and chains, impossibility of preference of something without cause, khulfArgument) and philosophical-theological arguments (Tamanu' Argument,Huduth (happening) Argument, Narrowness Argument, Contingence Argument, Argument from Design, the negation of meaning for the negation of reason, the impossibility of change in nature, and DhuHaddaynArguement).

Although belief in the absent and knowing it is a common point in the divine religions that is counted one of the fundamental theological issues in the heavenly religions, because of its complicatedness, the domain of knowing the absent affairs is disputed by the followers of the revealed religions. According to the Two Testaments and Qur'an, God is aware of the past and future affaires, and He foresaw everything before its creation. As well as the prophets and saints knowledge of the absent affairs, who are the divine grace's mediators, is discussible. Some maintained that by the divine teaching, they know some of the absent secrets. And others negated the domain of knowing the absent affairs by the prophets and saints and maintained that belief in knowing the absent affairs for other than God causespolytheism and infidelity. With an exact examination of the divine religions, we result that in addition to God's Knowledge of the absent affairs, the prophets and saints also know the absent affairs.

"New theology" is one of the approaches arose from the historical-thought background in the modern time developments, and is one of the contemporary humanistic attitudes that until now it brought about many encounters in the realm of our religious and domestic studies as well. One of significant encounters in this regard is the question pertaining to the nature of new theology that wither the characteristic of "new" belongs to theology itself or it is an accidental matter. Some scholars regarded the newness as inescapable and as a demand of the time as so far that some regarded the old theology and new theology as having two separate identities. The other view that is counted as the main stream between the new theology researchers in seminaries and universities sees the two in one continuation; that is the new theology is the developed form of the old theology and its continuation with some differences in components and effects such as method, bases and language. The third point of view is that of the first generation of the Islamic seminary Mutakellemum that believes that the difference is in the issues, not in nature. At the end, appropriate to the necessities of the religious community, this writingsuggested a new approach as "the practical theology".

The relation between God's nature and attributes is one of the fundamental Kalami issues, which has been always discussed by the Muslim thinkers. In this writing, the relation between God's nature and attributes from the viewpoint of Mu'tazili thinkers is reported. To avoid the problem of plurality of gods or plurality of eternal attributes in the Divine Nature, the Qadariyyah or the early Mutazilites were amongst the early groups that absolutely negated the attributes. Nevertheless, in order to avoid the problem of Taitil (not knowing God), some Mutazelites offered other various views such as Niyabat (deputyship), Ahwal and Ainiyyah (oneness) of the attributes with God's Nature, but all of the three views of Niyabat, Ahwal and Ainiyyah are a different reading of the theory of Attributes negation.

Based on the basis that sending the prophets is one of the cases for Lutf al-muqarreb, the majority of the previous Mutakallemun proved the necessity of sending the prophets by the Lutf rule. From Allah al-Hilli in Kashful- Murad, some grasped that sending the prophets is not a case for the Lutf rule. Thus, from their opinion, the Lutf rule is no longer useable for proving the necessity of prophet-hood. In the other hand, from Sheik al-Mufid upwards, another theory had been current that Lutf is not rationally necessary, and as a result, its effectiveness in proving the belief issues has been challenged. To resolve this problem, AyatullahSubhani separated between the cases. He maintains that Luft al-Muqarreb in some cases is rationally necessary and in some other cases is notnecessary, but is a demand of God's grace and bestow. In present article, the above mentioned discussions are examined in the AyatullahSubhani's works and its success and failure extents are evaluated.

The issue of "previous worlds" is one of the important issues in the Islamic knowledge, especially in the beliefs knowledge. The examination of historical course of the early centuries Muhaddiths' encounter with the narrations of the previous worlds is one of the necessities of studies in this realm. Thus, in this article, with the method of collecting data and their analysis, the historical course of narrating the narrations of the previous worlds and the compilations in this regard in the Kufa and Qom schools and the way of its feedback among the scholars and hadiths collections are examined. Although the way of the Muhaddiths' encounters with books entitled Al-Azellah (the Shadows) that were written in Kufa and its cause are obscure, finally one can say that many of the Shi'iMuhaddiths and scholars in both Kufa and Qom hadith cycles, that some of them were from amongst the Ashab al-Ijma', despite various trends, narrated these narrations. This way of treatment shows the acceptability of this issue in the Kufa and Qom schools.