Associate professor and faculty member of Imam Khomeini Educational and Research Institute/ Qom/ Iran
Abstract
Mystics consider the divine essence without considering its determinations to be indescribability. According to them, "God's essence" is superior to any judgment and description, and all the attributes of essence refer to "assignments of essence". At first glance, this claim has at least three major problems: (1) it is self-contradictory, (2) it requires all the problems of some theological theories, (3) it is contrary to religious texts and even many mystical texts, in which it appears that the essence are described. In this article, we have evaluated these three forms with analytical-descriptive method and we have shown that all three of them are the result of not paying attention to the correct meaning of indescribability. The mystics mean by the indescribability, is not that God is absolutely unknowable and indescribable, so that their claim is not self-contradictory or requires closure, and it does not mean to deprive the divine nature of perfect attributes, which contradicts with religious and mystical descriptions. Mystics, like other prominent Muslim thinkers, accept the brief knowledge of God's essence, as well as the description of the essence of truth, to the extent that it is possible for a creature to know Him. The mystics say that all our cognitions and all our descriptions are limited, determined, and incomplete, through determination and to the extent of determination, and they are not describe His indeterminate essence, so that even the term "indeterminate essence" is a kind of definite description of Him.
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