The Deontological Approach to Faith and Various Responses by Imami Shiite Theologians until the Eleventh Century

Document Type : The Quarterly Jornal

Author

PhD of Kalam (Philosophy of Religion and New Theological Problems), researcher at Masoumiyyeh Center for Islamic Research, Qom, Iran

Abstract

Although there is a hadith from Prophet Muḥammad that faith (īmān) is “verbal profession, cognizance in the heart, and doing the pillars,” the political social circumstances of the newly emerged Islamic society developed in such ways that the element of action or “doing the pillars” gained a great significance, leading to a view that we might refer to as “deontologism.” There are two ways in which the view is important: first, it is an influential theory of faith in the history of Islamic theology, and second, it directly or indirectly overshadowed other theories of faith. In this theory I seek to examine the approach and its characteristics by deploying the analytic-comparative method, but I am mainly concerned with how it was received by Imami Shiite theologians in the fifth century AH (eleventh century CE). I argue that the deontological approach to faith was practically tied with the tendency to “threats of divine punishment” (waʿīd) and the belief in “failure” (iḥbāṭ) of deeds. Imami theologians encountered the approach in three ways: it was endorsed by al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq; al-Shaykh al-Mufīd adopted a virtue-based approach, and thus, modified the view. That is, he emphasized the knowledge or cognizance component of faith, seeing the “action” as an integral part of faith. Finally, the approach was rejected by Nawbakhtis and al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā, who believed that faith belonged to the category of confession or endorsement, although they disagreed over the “failure” of deeds.

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References

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