Journal Of Religious Thought
Year:2010 | Volume:12 | Issue:35|Papers Count:13

In this paper, love is studied from Allama Tabatabayi's and Abuhamed Ghazali's viewpoints. We are going to find what the cause of the love is and what the basis of human love to God is from these two thinkers' viewpoints. Then we will discuss whether we can talk about divine love to human beings. We will see that Allama regards need the main cause of the human love to God, while Ghazali thinks that the source of this kind of love is enjoyment. Both thinkers say that human love to God is possible and consider God as the most perfect beloved of human beings. Both of them agree that God loves his servants, but Ghazali interprets it metaphorically, while Allama considers it as a real love.

“Subjective proposition” is one of the terms that are introduced in Islamic Logic and used in Islamic Philosophy. In this paper, I investigate the term’s history and show that the subjective proposition has had many meanings in different times and had been associated with many different kinds of propositions. This variety and changes in meaning have caused the subjective proposition to encounter many ambiguities both in Islamic Logic and Islamic Philosophy. In this paper, I have tried to formulate the meanings of the subjective proposition by Symbolic Logic, and thereby to provide the possibility of assessing the term. In this process, we can have a better device to test the accuracy of the claims on the subjective proposition and the correctness of its use in Logic and Philosophy.

Regarding that Knowing God's essence is impossible, we can find the importance of Knowing his attributes. In this relation we see different views and debates concerning the possibility or impossibility of understanding the meaning of God's attributes in the history of theology and philosophy and whether we can describe God by human's attributes. It seems that the views which combine both God's transcendence and his similarity to the creatures, are more consistent to religious instructions. We will discuss this recent theory from Spioza's and Mulla sadra's viewpoints using Ibn Arabi's theory as an introduction.

There are four commentaries about linguistic roots of Hurqalia; Greek, Syraic, Hebraic and Farsi. Among these, we should prefer the fourth; Because Hurqalia has been originated from two Persian words: khur/hur and kalpa which are meant “solar body” and Iranian people knew this word. Suhrawardi as a founder of illuminative philosophy in twelfth century, explains world in four levels the third of which is inverted forms or imaginable world or suspended universe or separated analog world. All of these terms equals exactly to Hurqalia. In Shaykhiyya, Hurqalia is named spiritual world (Malakut). Beside of similarity between illuminative philosophy and Shaykhiyya we see some differences. Ahsaei, as a leader of Shakhiyya, explains world in three levels while suhrawardi puts it in four ones. Manifestations of Hurqalia in the both schools are unit. Some of these Manifestations are more epistemological like: imagination, dream, inspiration and some of them are more ontological like Jinns, mirror, immaterial voices and scents.

Shekhinah (similar to sakinah) means peace which conveys the Divine Prensence in Jewish religious literature. This article first discusses semantic evolution of shekhinah from the time of writing the Talmud by jewish rabbis up to contemporary jewish philosophers. In Talmudic literature, shekhinah often means the face of God and often it is used instead of God Himself. In Hassidism theosophy, shekhinah is identified with Glory of God or kavod (the medium of creation). In Qabbalah, shekhinah is Malkhuth, last sefira in sefirot or Dinvine manifitations which has the especial status and function. Shekhinah presents the womanhood in Divine world and manifests the Divine "self" where the human self rests and resides in peace. Finally, this paper discusses the exile of Shekhinah from her Divine root, which is caused by the sin of Adam and his fall of paradise. Also the various symbols of Shekhinah in Qabbalah and the rituals related to Shekhinah are expressed.

In religious thought, faith has been treated as the most eminent value. However, this question has always been propounded: Do all believers have equal and similar faiths and hence equal values? In other words, can faith and blasphemy increase or decrease or not? Accepting either side of the problem involves questions such as: are faith and blasphemy simple or compound affairs? Is action related in their reality or not? Answering these questions, Islamic scientists have different viewpoints. This essay is to decipher and compare the viewpoints of two Islamic superior thinkers, Mulla Sadra and Ibn Arabi. According to Mulla Sadra’s documentations such as his Quranic interpretations and his general fundamentals of philosophy including principality of existence, analogicity of existence, substantial motion and his theological views such as regarding faith and blasphemy as existential things, this conclusion has been drawn that from his point of view, faith and blasphemy can be weak or strong.But Ibn Arabi did not enter in numerous discussions concerning faith and blasphemy in his works and also his expressions in this relation are equivocal and cause uncertainty in his opinion. Regarding prevailing reasons and documents showing confirmation of existence and oscillation in faith and blasphemy, justifications should be presented in order to obviate these contradictions. In the case that contradictions are justified, it can be said that he also believed in decrease and increase in faith and blasphemy. However, in admissibility of accepting decrease and increase in faith and bleaphemy, although his fundamentals don’t have variety the same and consolidation as Sadra’s. Detailed speeches, documentations and attitudes of these two thinkers should be searched within this essay.

The creation can be studied from different dimensions such as its creator, its inner system, and its ultimate system. This paper is seeking to address the following questions: A) Is the system of creation purposeful?B) Has the creator any purpose in his creation?C) What do we mean when we say that God is not purposeful in creating?From the Muslim philosophers' point of view, the divine wisdom (Hekmat) states that God's actions should be purposeful. On the other hand the same philosophers express that God does not haveany purpose in creation. Therefore, not having the purpose means that God has knowledge of himself and is satisfied by it. This has motivated a to make the creattion.