A Historical Analysis of Identification of God’s Will with Knowledge in Imami Theology

Document Type : The Quarterly Jornal

Author

Assistant professor, Islamic Sciences and Culture Academy, Qom, Iran

Abstract

A study of the history of theological ideas in the early centuries clearly suggests that Imami Shiite theologians of the period viewed the will as an incipient (ḥādith) entity, distinct from God’s knowledge and power. In the history of Islamic theology, the identification of God’s will with knowledge was first proposed by the theological trend of Iʿtizāl, but in the Imami trend of theology, such an account of the will was proposed by middle-period theologians; that is, those belonging to the theological schools of Rey and Hillah. Imami theologians of the period identified the will as a motive (dāʿī), and identified the motive in turn as knowledge of the interest (maṣlaḥa) within the action. Although the heritage of this group of theologians remains undecided as to whether the divine will is incipient or eternal (qadīm), there is evidence to the effect that it had preferences for the incipience of the will. Drawing on the library method and the method of historical analysis, this article seeks to see how such an epistemic shift occurred in accounting for the divine will. The conclusion of historical analyses of this phenomenon leads us to the idea that since the official theology in this period parted ways with the hadiths from the Household of the Prophet and turned to the late theological trend of Iʿtizāl, Imami theologians of the period endorsed theological analyses and accounts of Iʿtizāl as solutions to epistemological problems posed by the philosophical trend of thought, and introduced them to Imami theology.

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References

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