List of Articles God’s Will

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  1 - God’s Will in Ṭūsī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and ‘Allāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī
  Armin Mansouri Ali Alahbedashti
  The howness of God’s Will is one of the problems that has provoked a lot of discussion in the field of theology. Although all philosophers have accepted God’s Will as a Divine Attribute, there are several disagreements in its interpretation. The purpose of this paper is More

  The howness of God’s Will is one of the problems that has provoked a lot of discussion in the field of theology. Although all philosophers have accepted God’s Will as a Divine Attribute, there are several disagreements in its interpretation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate, compare, and evaluate the views of Khwājah Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and ‘Allāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī in terms of the semantics, origin, and ontology of God’s Will. Ṭūsī maintains that will is the same as motive, which is the same as knowledge of the goodness of act, and thus believes in God’s essential will as an essential attribute. Mullā Ṣadrā also adds the sameness of love with will to the sameness of the knowledge of goodness of act with act and introduces will as an essential attribute. Moreover, he justifies the Infallible Imam’s narrations regarding the sameness of will with act by changing its meaning from having the intention to perform an act to the making and changing of its level from essence to the level of actual existents. However, ‘Allāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī views the identity of free will with the knowledge of the best system as a verbal conflict and a merely different denomination. He disagrees with equating free will with any essential attribute (such as love) other than knowledge. Thus he maintains that free will is not an essential attribute but is, rather, abstracted from the level of act and is one of its attributes. He also introduces the essence of an act that occurs in the outside or the presence of perfect cause for the act as its source of abstraction. It seems that ٬Allāmah’s change of ontological view of free will and considering it an actual attribute in justifying rational constraints are more accurate than regarding it as an essential attribute without paying attention to the conceptual difference between free will and knowledge and love, which has been propounded by Ṭūsī and Mullā Ṣadrā. Manuscript profile
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  2 - An Evaluation of the Theories of Suhrawardī Versus the Mu‘tazilites on God’s Will
  Mostafa Esfandiari Mohammad Mahdi Salami Rasool Padashpour
  <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1.0cm; line-height: 130%;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roma More

  <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 1.0cm; line-height: 130%;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;">One of the attributes and perfections of God is Will, a correct perception of which, similar to other attributes, can lead to the perfection of the knower. Although all Muslim phosphors attribute this Will to God, the quality of this attribution has always created some clash of ideas. Most <em>Mu&lsquo;tazilite</em> <em>mutikallimūn</em> negate God&rsquo;s affirmative attributes, including will, to essence and consider them to be additional to it. They maintain that the Divine Essence is the vicegerent for attributes. Among pre-Suhrawardī philosophers, some interpret the free will as the knowledge of the higher order, and some others have referred it to the attribute of knowledge to clarify its meaning. As a result, these two attributes are in unity with each other in terms of concept and referents. Regarding Suhrawardī, some believe that he denies the free will, while a study of the fundamental principles of his philosophical system reveals that the opposite holds true. From among such principles, reference can be made to the gracefulness of the light of all lights (<em>nūr al-anwār</em>), identity of Divine Attributes with Essence, and the light of all lights as the sum of all perfections. According to these principles, all the perfections at lower levels exist in the highest level in a more complete and nobler form. The attribute of will is also an existential perfection, the demonstration of which leads to honor and eminence, and the denial of which leads to the negation of perfection. Hence, given the general content of Shurawardī&rsquo;s philosophy, he must have necessarily agreed with attributing will to Almighty God. Regarding the inclusiveness of will, the <em>Mu&lsquo;tazilites</em> do not view Man as possessing the necessary will, while Suhrawardī considers the attributes of the light of all lights to belong to all existents, including Man in the light of introducing the light of all lights as an all-inclusive truth.</span></p> Manuscript profile