معرفت کلامی

Abdolrahim Soleimani Behbahani / Assistant Professor of the Research Center for Islamic Sciences and Culture                                                                                                    soleimani@isca.ac.ir

Received: 2017/04/22 - Accepted: 2017/08/26

Abstract

Building up a picture of Divine Essential and Active Attributes and Trying to resolve the doubts about divine attributes have a prominent role in deepening religious beliefs and preventing any kind of deviation from religious beliefs. Although it is commonly believed that Divine Truth is a divine attribute, it may sometimes be in conflict with another religious belief, such as pardoning some sinners according to Divine will and not inflicting punishment on them. The Tafazoliyah, who believe in the permissibility of granting pardon, present various theories to show the consistency of this belief with the attribute of divine truth and the retribution referred to in the Qur'an and hadiths. Some of these theories are: the theory of the denial of considering all kinds of lying bad, the theory of creationism of divine retribution; the theory of the lack of the realistic property of the language of divine retribution; the theory of the denial of administering Divine retribution and relating it to the punishment which one deserves and the theory of the conditional property of divine retribution. The present paper, which is a library-based study based on and a descriptive- analytical method, considers the latter theory i.e., the conditional property of the verses, narrations on divine retribution and not generalizing them as a coherent theory which has a rational, Qur’anic and traditional basis, and regards the other four theories to be flawed.

Key words: Divine Truth, retribution, breaching the act of retribution, beneficial lying, Va’idiyah, Tafazoliyah.