Scriptural Divine Attributes between Reality and Delusion

Falah Sabti

Abstract

Illusionary perceptions are what that human self spontaneously obtains without thinking and contemplating. It is well-known to philosophers and logicians that this kind of perception is the perception of the partial meanings related to sensual things, and that, which is responsible for this, is the faculty of illusion.

By this faculty, the human self has rulings on perceptible and imaginary things that are often true, such as the laws of ‎geometrics, but by such laws it might go beyond perceptible things to purely rational ones. So that it moves the ruling of perceptible material things to abstract reasonable ones. However, these laws are false and refuted by reason, and this is reflected negatively on the study of theology. This reflection has many applications, the most important of which is that which concerns the study of scriptural divine attributes (al-sifat al-ilahiyah al-khabariyah). Some scholars have taken them for their fixed traditional meanings of perceptible things and applied them to the Holy Divine Essence, relying on one of the illusionary rulings that are denied by reason. This is called the rule of comparing the imperceptible to the perceptible.

In this article, I shed light on the problematics of this matter due to the rules of the rational approach that puts each tool or way of knowledge in its place that is compatible with itself constitutionally.

Keywords: the power of illusion, illusions, divine attributes, scriptural attributes, comparing the imperceptible to the perceptible.

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