ANDISHE-E-NOVIN-E-DINI
Year:2015 | Volume:11 | Issue:40|Papers Count:11

Pathology of religious epistemology-that is recognition of the problems damaging the religious conception and belief - is a newly established discussion, though some of its representations could be found among the works of ancient scholars. As a religious thinker and contemplating on Islamic resources, while Allameh Tabatabaie recognizes the problems in religious epistemology, he confronts with them and consequently, he has proposed various methods for correct conception of religion. Enumerating the most important problems in religious epistemology in two sections of principles and methods of understanding religion and emphasizing on this divine scientist’s opinions, the present paper not only has analyzed the type of the problems and their damaging effects on religious epistemology but also has investigated his strategies to conflict with these damages. For him, the way of avoiding the problems such as relativism, eclecticism, innovation, superstition, lack of integrity, interpretation to opinions, and separating religion from social and individual life is the Holistic Definite Reason and its focus is on the Holy Quran.

Based on Theological Fatalism, since God has prior and infallible knowledge about the future events, human is not able to do anything except what is known by God beforehand; as a result, human actions are not choice - based. To solve this problem, theologians and philosophers of religion have provided different answers for this reasoning. One of these answers has been called Open Theism which is a modern theory in respect to God’s knowledge and human will. For advocates of this theory who are divided into three groups, God is omniscient; however, since they believe that future is open to God in epistemological terms and it may be changed; therefore, the God’s prior knowledge to human free - will actions is logically impossible. Although this group does not absolutely reject God’s prior knowledge, they believe that it is typically restricted and since these restrictions are logically inevitable, there would be no damages to the God’s omniscience. Explicating the theory of Open Theism, the paper deals with its analysis and criticism.

God’s Will is one of the most important discussions whose theological and philosophical interpretations are different from each other, though, regarding interpretation of “God’s Will”, some of the theologians have been inclined to philosophical thoughts. In the early Imamieh theologians’ beliefs, with emphasis on the concepts of the Ahlul - Bayt’s hadiths, will was one of the stages of God’s Act and it was meant “determined to Providence”; however, along with Mu’tazila of Baghdad, Baghdad School interpreted this term as “divine action” or “order to action”, though considering innate nature for will and interpreting it as “knowledge to expediency in actions” had some advocates, too. After Baghdad’s School and during the history of Imamieh theology, interpretation of will was influenced by philosophical thoughts and ultimately, in Hilla School, will was interpreted as an innate issue or stimulus i.e. “knowledge to expediency and goodness in actions”. This study intends to investigate the whatness of will from philosophers and theologians’ viewpoint and its evolution during Medieval, especially in theology of Baghdad and Hilla schools and having a comparative evaluation on these viewpoints, it attempts to find their relation with an approach to narrations.

One of the important problems related to God’s will is its prevalence. For Sadra, God’s will is pervasive and objectivity of the traits with essence, the rule of “basit al - haqiqah” and his particular explication on causality are considered as his principles of this viewpoint. One of the most challenges of this theory is its incompatibility with some verses, narrations and human free will. To solve these problems, on some occasions, Sadra has taken his policy based on the famous opinion; however, deeper reflection could reveal his particular viewpoint in this regard which is rooted from a kind of pantheism.

As a Saadat of Hassani and descendants of Imam Hasan Mojtaba, Edris Ibn Abdollah, after taking part in the uprising of Hossein Ibn Ali, famous for being endowed by Fakhkh, ran away and went toward west. In Islamic Morocco and a part of the present Aljeria, established the first independent Shiite government which was named after him and he founded a civilization in Morocco. Although a civilization with a short life, its cultural effects have been remained to the present time. Various reasons and passage of time led to uncertainty in Edris’ religious tendencies as well as his successors. Investigation of the problem in this paper reveals that although it could not be possible to express definite opinions about their religion, it is more likely that Edris and his descendents were Imami believers while there is no certain evidence available against this idea.

For Shiite scholars, the realm of revelation has been known to be wide and they believe that all of the prophet’s speeches and behaviors are derived from revelation; however, the theory of “segregation of revelation from judgment” which is different from the famous viewpoint is ascribed to Allameh Tabatabaie by some scholars. According to this theory, a differentiation should be made between the prophet’s speech about religion and its regulations, versus those speeches related to regular life, daily affairs and managing the society. In other words, although there were three responsibilities of Publicity, Wilayat, and Judgment on the prophet, regarding Wilayat and judgment, after consulting with others he would announce and apply his own opinion and recognition. To put it in other words, the prophet’s speech within these two sections is his “judgment” not the God’s “revelation”. Adopting an analytico - descriptive approach as well as library research method, the paper attempts to investigate this theory as an intra - religious discussion.

By analyzing the Jewish theology before and after Islam the changes made by Muslims among the traditional Jewish scholars could be revealed. “Rationalism” was a prominent feature developed among the Jews after Islam and this feature lacks Jewish history except a short period among a few scholars such as Philo, until the foundations of this intellectual method were established in Judaism by Islam and by accepting this upheaval some great scholars from Judaism such as David Al Mukammas and Saadia Ga’un from the traditional community of Judaism and Qerqesani from the sect of Kara`im gave rise to a new period of Jewish intellectualism. This upheaval was caused by two major factors, the first of which was the great achievement of Muslim theologians making the scholars of other religions eager to learn it and the second one was the stability and possibility created by Islam in Muslim communities so that various sciences including Islamic theology could be flourished among Islam scholars and other religions. The Muslims’ theological influence was further exerted by the rationalists like Mu’tazila who were attempting to unite reason and religion with each other. This approach was accepted by Jewish scholars and they needed this method to introduce their religion justifiably between other religions and also to defend it among the followers of Judaism; consequently, union of reason and religion became their concern.

The renowned Sunni theologian and commentator, Fakhr Razi, is a capable writer who has written many books about analyzing the theologian discussions. This reason is one of the causes of difficulty in understanding his final viewpoint in some problems and in some issues, his viewpoint seems to be unstable and vague among which one can refer to the issue of “knowing objective innocents”. For Razi, like many other Muslim theologians, presence of the innocents is necessary for keeping Sharia safe from change and deviation. In the book “Al - Mataleb Al - Aliyeh” about prophecy, he sees Shias’ viewpoint on infallibility of the Imams as the explicit right and this is in contradiction with his viewpoint in his other works. In addition to analyzing duality of his viewpoint about “knowing objective innocents”, the claims of some other scholars about Fakhr’s works and thoughts regarding the mentioned problem have been criticized. It is obvious that the principle of existence of innocent imams after Prophet Mohammad is known to be necessary for him and its evidence in some cases has been introduced as “union” and in some others as “perfect persons” and he considers the Shiite Imams such as Imam Mahdi as examples of perfect and innocent individuals.

An important subject of resurrection is the issue of individual survival and it is emphasized on by teachings of divine religions; however, followers of Ibn Rushd attribute the denial of human individual resurrection to him who is a great Islamic philosopher. Some of the Ibn Rush’s statements confirm this attribution because for him, human soul is abstract, he does not believe in physical resurrection and for him, numerical plurality is exclusive to materials. The result of these three introductions leads to the fact that human abstract soul cannot be united after death of the body. Therefore, we should believe in unity of human soul after death. Since Ibn Rush is a Muslim, he should believe in numerical plurality of human souls in resurrection. To deny this attribution to him, some solutions could be proposed. Firstly, we can accept this rule with its apparent meaning in that numerical plurality is existed within materials. Secondly, some of Ibn Rushd’s statements suggest that either he does not always undertake this rule or he takes the concept of material as general and construes it as absolute capability, not physical material. For instance, he recognizes numerical plurality among the superior reasons based on rating integrity.

One of the basic questions asked by the researchers in the field of religion is that whether all of the followers of religions are the people of salvation or whether a few certain people will be saved and reach salvation and in this regard, what kind of destiny is waiting for the weak people - who form a great deal of human population? What are the opinions of religious resources and scholars in this respect? Comparing Allameh Tabatabaie and Shahid Motahari’s viewpoints, the paper deals with illustration of the relation between religious weakness and salvation. These two thinkers not only believe in negative salvation of the weak people but they also believe in affirmative salvation i.e. entrance of the weak people to paradise. It should, of course, be mentioned that Allameh Tabatabaie has come to this conclusion through inclusion of the God’s forgiveness and Shahid Motahari through the lack of their apostasy and having innate religion.