Conceptual and Extensional Identity of God's Essence and Attributes

This essay attempts to explain Avicenna’s view of the relation between God’s essence and His attributes. The problem of God’s attributes is much important such that it was held to be the first and the most basic issue of Islamic theology. There is no doubt that some excessive or negligence views concerning the relation of God’s attributes to His essence have misunderstood the issue and reached to some bad consequences. According to the famous and commonly accepted theory, all of God’s attributes having different concepts refer to one extensive that is His essence. Avicenna’s view of the relation of God’s essence to His attributes which is known as the unique theory of God’s attributes is contrary to the commonly accepted view, namely, the extensional identity of attributes without the conceptual identity of them. Unfortunately, Avicenna’s theory because of its eccentric character was neglected by the later philosophers.This article tries to explain Avicenna’s view and compares it to the view of the founder of the Transcendent Philosophy, MullaSadra.