Ma`rifat Kalami

We may say that the discussion of religious language is something has been discussed in all celestial religions. The related discussions include the nature of religious language, the meaningfulness and effectiveness of various types of religious propositions. The most important discussion is pertaining to theological propositions, which have been for long the focus of attention on the part of religious philosophers and theologians. The related question is whether we may attribute limited human and material conceptions to the unlimited non-physical God. The present article deals with an investigation and comparison of the views of Allama Tabatabaie and the contemporary American philosopher of religion, William Alston, on the language of theology. Alston presents the theory of "Functionalism" to resolve the problem of attribution of theological proposition to God. To resolve this problem, Allama Tabatabaie presents the theories of "Semantic Commonality and Gradation of Existence", "Theological Hermeneutics", and "Finality", each of which is applicable somewhere. The theory of "Semantic Commonality" is applicable for attributes such as knowledge, power, life and existence, justifying their application; the second theory is applicable to attributes such as All-Hearing (samī)', All-Seeing (basīr), having hands, and occupying space; i.e. those attributes belonging to possibilities, being far away from Divine Presence. These attributes are interpreted based on the attributes of the first group, and the theory of Finality is applicable in conventional and religious language, justifying their application and veracity.