An Explanation of the Relation between Authority, Rightfulness, Sealness (khatamiyyat) and Justification of Religious Beliefs

There are different epistemological views which have focused on the justification of religious beliefs in the present time. One of its important approaches is foundationalism which has the two perspectives of introversion and extroversion; it even notices rightfulness or non-rightfulness as well. Another epistemological approach is reasonism and the third view is religious experience which helped the formation of the final approach, named authority, due to its agreements and oppositions. In this approach the founder can be a measure to justify religious beliefs which is especially less discussed and is the topic of this research. In his book 'The Ethics of Belief', Clifford expanded the theory of authority as one of the approaches of religious beliefs and its effects on our scholars, especially regarding revelation, became clear [in his writing]. The final conclusion is that authority is the criterion to judge about the value of justification and is not rational.