rasoul rasoulipour

One of the divine attributes is God's omnipresence in the universe. God's presence can be understood in various ways. One such interpretation is God's "sustaining" presence, signifying His general agency in relation to the world. According to this notion, God is the cause of both the existence and the persistence of the universe. Ibn Sina assigns a special place to the efficient cause among the four Aristotelian causes and elevates the concept of the efficient cause from a mere triggering cause to one that bestows existence. He offers two elaborations to elucidate God's effective causality with respect to the world, which are intrinsically related. These two explanations can be titled: "God's bestowal of existence upon essences" and "God's conferring of necessity upon essences." Using analytical approach in reading Ibn Sina’s works, in this article, after elucidating these two explanations, their interrelation is also clarified. Ultimately, considering Ibn Sina's hierarchical structure of beings, a kind of graded and tentative sustaining presence is derived from his philosophical system.

The problem of evil has always been a challenge against theism and there has been a lot of disputation about it. What can be considered as a newer challenge to theism is the very problem of divine hiddenness. There are multiple similarities between the two arguments which have caused some thinkers to reduce one to another and to count only one of them as original. It is possible that one of the very concepts of evil or hiddenness be reduced to another one, or one of the arguments that is grounded on them, or the reduction occurs in both phases. Regarding the vastitude of the domain of each problem, what we solely aim at is inspecting the reasons of ones who hold that divine hiddenness is nothing but one articulation of the problem of evil and it is not necessary to be regarded as independent. These reasons range from a sort of resemblance of their logical structure, methodology, conclusion, or responses in order to show that either the problem of divine hiddenness is not independent at all or if it is, it makes a much less severe case against theism in comparison to the problem of evil so it’s not worthy of any concern. What will be eventually concluded is that despite having plentiful available similarities, this kind of reduction is not justified and each problem, regardless of their ability to prove what they claim, is independently precious, inspection-worthy, and original.

Deploying the analytical method, this article addresses Mahmoud Ayoub’s theory of redemptive suffering in Islam. This theory was inspired by the Christian doctrine of redemptive suffering, wherein Jesus Christ’s passions are considered an atonement for the deliverance and salvation of humanity, liberating them from slavery to sins. Considering that Imam al-Husayn’s suffering and martyrdom in Karbala granted him the right to intercession, through which he can deliver people from the fires of hell, Ayoub presents a model for redemption and salvation based on Islamic doctrines and Imami Shiite theology. This article provides a critical examination of Ayoub’s model. Finally, by assessing the possibility and potentiality of the concept of redemption in Shiite theology, the article aims to pave another path for research on its full compatibility with the theological principles of Imami Shiism.

The Theology of Event" is a new approach to theology that is rooted in postmodern philosophies. The concept that John D. Caputo, the American philosopher of religion, based on the ideas of her teacher Jacques Derrida, has established to negate the theological systems based on traditional western philosophy and seeks religion minus metaphysics. Event Theology tells about a kind of instability in meaning, and depicts a threshold and indeterminate situation in theological concepts. This attitude denies the permission of any absolutism and systematization, and in a word, metaphysics-centeredness in theological concepts from human thought. The Theology of Event talks about concepts that are continuously being realized, an open, unpredictable, and uncontrollable future, and instead of epistemological strains, it emphasizes the pragmatic and existential features of religion.  In the Theology of Events, instead of dealing with religious knowledge, which is necessarily a metaphysical matter, serious attention is paid to religious rituals such as altruism, good deeds, seeking justice, and ethics. But from a critical point of view, one should ask whether theology minus metaphysics is conceivable in principle? In other words, is it possible to enter the field of theology without philosophical interpretation and formulation? This article is an answer to this basic question against the concept of the Theology of Events.

The present study attempts to identify the conceptual network of socialization from the perspective of Imam Musa Sadr and clarify its implications for the field of social education. To achieve this goal, descriptive-analytical and practical inference methods have been used. According to this research, Imam Musa Sadr's general idea of socialization is an idea of an organism whose main components have been studied in eleven components. The central component of the idea of socialization in the view of Imam Musa Sadr is considered "compassionate interaction and coexistence" and the relationship of other components with this component has been analyzed and interpreted. The implications of this general idea and its constituent components for the nature of social education are also specified in ten general implications. Among these implications we can mention “the necessity of monotheistic attitude”, “the necessity of innate humanism”, “the necessity of looking at another as self” and “the necessity of believing in freedom as value”.

Discussion about the divine attributes has a long term history in theology and philosophy. Among all of the divine attributes, “knowledge” has received more attention because of its effectiveness in determining all of the verbal issues related to interpretation of this divine specification. Avicenna and Duns Scotus are representatives of the two main theories about the Gos’d knowledge among the Islamic and Christian philosophers whom I have studies and compared in this research. The main difference between these two philosophers in divine knowledge can be recorded as Scotus’ God is a purposeful actor (fa’el-e bel-qasd), however, Avicenna introduces the God as the wise and single-minded actor (fa’el-e-bel-enayah) justifying the creation based on the grace. While there is this big difference, there are many similarities between these two opinions; such as, both of them consider God as a cause for creation. Both believe in existence of creatures in divine knowledge before their real creation without considering reasonable forms or platonic parables as separated creatures. Both of them believe that God has no other purpose except for his essence for creation of universe or human.

More than anything else, Molinism seeks to prove the compatibility between providence and free will. One of the current debates is what God’s knowledge is and its limits. That is, if we accept middle knowledge, how can we believe in two things; First, the freedom and second, the Compatibility of free will with divine providence. Molinism’s suggested solution is middle knowledge. Based on the middle knowledge, the counterfactual that corresponds to a free action is the solution to this problem. Asking the truth validity of these conditionals, Adams argues that middle knowledge is the begging the question and absurd. Because the analysis of middle knowledge tells us that despite the efforts of Molinism, freedom is not proven. On the other hand, in a detailed critique, Flint dismisses Adamschr('39') claim. In this article, as its title suggests, first Adamschr('39') argument and then Flintchr('39')s critique of it are discussed in detail.

The main argument of the book Warranted Christian Belief by Plantinga is a distinction between de facto and de jure objections to Christian belief. De facto objections, according to him, are those about the truth of Christian belief, where the claim is relatively straightforward that rge belief is false. However, Plantinga is primarily concerned with de jure objections, which are arguments or claims that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or irrational, or without sufficient evidence, or in some way not intellectually respectable. While the conclusion of such objections is that there is something wrong with Christian belief, Plantinga contends that the question is never explicitly formulated of what exactly is wrong; however, he finally locates a promising candidate for the de jure question in the complaints against theistic belief by Freud and Marx. Critics, according to Plantinga, cannot simply object to the rationality or justifiability of theistic belief without presupposing that theistic belief is false. However, I will, in this paper, argue that the epistemic objection to the rationality of theism need not presuppose the falsity of theism or Christian belief, and I will show that the most important charge against Plantinga’s defense – if theism is true, it is warranted – is that it proves too much.

The question of cognition in human life is a long-standing and central issue that has arisen from the beginning of human thought about existence. The set of ideas presented in this regard has created the field of epistemology. There are original and interesting points about cognition in Rumi’s mystical heritage and an important part of his views on this subject is related to the discussion of human cognitive errors and limitations. This question has also been proposed in various ways in the Western philosophical tradition and has received answers and explanations. In this research, using a descriptive-analytical method and adopting a comparative approach an attempt has been made to investigate the multiple dimensions of human cognitive errors and limitations from Rumi’s perspective. To that end, we have also reviewed the evolutionary course of the subject in the Western philosophical tradition. Therefore, categories such as reason, experience, illusion, imagination, existence and appearance of the world have been dealt with followed by quotations and analyses of Rumi’s views on this subject. Finally, it is shown how Rumi also explored and expressed the multiple aspects of errors and limitations of human cognition and what similarities his views bear to the Western philosophical tradition. Moreover, the differences and similarities between the attitudes of philosophers and mystics towards the nature and quality of cognition have been studied. The most important differences can be seen in the pivotal role of reason among philosophers and its invalidity for some other aspects of cognition among mystics. On the other hand, the allegory of the cave in Plato’s philosophy and the question of existence and appearance of the world, and the role of imagination in investigating the world in the eyes of eighteenth-century idealist philosophers are very similar to the fundamentals of epistemology in Rumi’s views. It is found that part of Rumi’s views on describing the position of reason and human’s cognitive limitations is similar to the views of seventeenth-century rationalist epistemologists, and in terms of the special position of experience in cognition and its limitations, it is close to those of eighteenth-century empiricists.

Jurgen Moltmann (1926-) is one of the first generations of the post-world war theologians who existentially experienced the ominous consequences of despair in the Christian society and made his best efforts, alongside the Confessional Church, to resurrect “hope” among the Christians. Utilizing the Liberal and the Existential Theology and demythologizing of the Christian history reserve, he stated that the resurrection of “hope” is the result of human existential capacity along with his/her knowledge and decision. Applying dialectical method, Moltmann put the “eschatology”, which was an aphotic subject at the end of all Christian theology books, as a practical principle at the center of the Christian theology, besides “cross” and “resurrection” of Christ. Influenced by Ernst Bloch and away from theistic and pantheistic God, Moltmann borrowed the “panentheistic” view of Pannenberg about God and by a new interpreting of the “cross” and the “resurrection”, distinguished from Martin Luther, Karl Barth, and Rudolf Bultmann’s, he made God with His “covenant” the most watchful figure in the human being’s sufferings and challenges and the most active being in the fate of man and cosmos. In this documented, critical and analytical article, emphasizing on the first book of Moltmann; i.e. Theology of Hope, we have tried to answer the question of importance of “hope” in Moltmann’s theology in comparison with Bultmann’s liberal and existential theology, Barth’s neo-orthodox theology, and Bloch’s Marxist philosophy of hope. Moltmann could accomplish the presence of the Holy Book in the Christians’ daily life, and make a comprehensible key for solving the problems of the Christian society by resurrecting of the eschatological hope instead of remaining at the present or the past.

One of the most important and challenging theories of Open Theism is its particular view of the attribute of divine omniscience. This theory acknowledges that God is the Absolute, yet stipulates that God's knowledge does not include what man performs with his free will in the future. The acceptance of absolute authority for man and the embracing of the contradiction between the "freely chosen actions of man in the future" and the "foreknowledge of God" have led the Open Theism to deny the foreknowledge of God in these acts. At the same time, they argue that the lack of “a priori knowledge of God” in these kinds of actions does not undermine his absolute knowledge. Advocates of open theism, proving their own viewpoints by referring to all kinds of views on God's knowledge and expressing the deficiencies in these theories, maintain that this view is more acceptable logically and philosophically, and due to its compatibility with the Holy Bible. While mentioning the shortcomings of three other contending perspectives in this regard namely "simple knowledge", "middle knowledge" and "Augustinian- Calvinist view ",  they consolidate their views and establish their own theory.

Kelly James Clark considers in Big Bang and Darvinism as two critical and challenging issues in the 20th century; while explaining the relationship between religion and science.He believes that although the first issue can be a boost to the belief in being a creator, the second, often due to the wrong ways of addressing it, has led to a conflict between science and religion. In this regard, the study of the matters created in the face of evolution theory and their positions in redefinition of the relationship between science and religion is one of the axes of this article. Among other things, the way Muslim intellectuals are exposed and the factors influencing their position are considered. The confrontation that seems to have not been based on "belief in the conflict of science and religion" or "scientism", especially in Iran, but has had considerable reasonable.Reasons for doubling clarity with the advent of blind and random interpretations of evolution and the imposition of its theological consequences. Clarke's analysis of the meaning of the randomness of the evolutionary process and its explanation of God's creativity, when evolution is in the hands of a random approach, is an answer that challenges evolutionary biologists.

This article deals with the New Atheism as one of the most important anti-religious currents in the present day. It came to the surface of public opinion during the first decade of this century. Its spokesmen, in the first place by popularizing the natural sciences, and then by leaning on a naturalistic worldview, and finally under the pretext of terrorist attacks and the behavior of some religious fundamentalists and religious extremist currents, launched a strong attack against religion and religious beliefs. With the same approach, they are emphasizing on the conflict between science and religion, and see the theory of evolution and its most important component, natural selection, enough to explain everything. In contrast, according to the theologies of Abrahamic religions, we can insist on the compatibility of science and religion. So we can find that these religions not only insist on the importance of the reason and intellectual thinking, but also use the achievements of the reason in natural sciences and scientific theories.

In recent years, many theologians have tried to solve the problem of conflict between science and religion. Alvin Plantinga is a well-known American Calvinist philosopher who proposed the conflict between science and naturalism as a solution to this problem. He mainly tries to evaluate the seemingly conflict examples, and meanwhile he partly criticize the foundations of the contemporary cosmology, epistemology and scientific methodology in order to solve the challenge. The conflict assumption, according to Plantinga, comes from the wrong interpretations of science, its naturalistic methodology and the exaggerated pictures of the historical conflict examples. Indeed, he claims that there is no real conflict between religion and science, and the seemingly conflict between them is superficial, i.e., there is no factual inconsistency between religion and science, but the real conflict is between science and naturalism.

In this paper, we investigate the relation between Will and Knowledge; especially the effect of the will on knowledge in its Western philosophical tradition. A short record of the issue from the ancient to the present time is offered and William James, a twentieth century American philosopher, is introduced as the criterion in this field. Therefore, the history of the issue is divided to three periods: “Before James”, “James”, and “After James”. The role of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are narrated as two key philosophers in the first period and it is explained why they are not widely welcomed in this regard in the world of philosophy. Later, we examine the general lines of James’ theory; especially his “The Will to Believe”. In this part, we show that some of James assumptions are not acceptable, although, his theory in general is defendable. Finally, we look at Quine’s thought as the philosopher who spread James’ teachings recently among the philosophers. We show that Quine’s naturalism, universalism, and even his naturalized epistemology have been influenced by James. At the end of this paper, the influential contemporary philosophers in this field are introduced.