The Examination and Critique of Qāḍī Sa‘īd Qumī‘s Stance to God’s Attributes With an Emphasis on the Divine Knowledge Attribute

Qāḍī Sa‘īd Qumī is one of the greatest philosophers and mystics of Iran during the Safavid era. He was competent in peripatetic and Illumination philosophies, and had mystic tendencies. With regard to the divine attributes, he believes in the negative divinity and believes that what we understand from the existence and attributes of the possible beings cannot be attributed to God. The reasons he gives in for this is that God is the pure Being and has no attribute, and the human intellect does not have the capability to understand God and His attributes. With regard to the ontology of attributes, Qāḍī deems detestable the belief in the addition and sameness of attributes with God, and favors the representativeness of attributes for the divine essence. He extensively discusses the divine knowledge attribute and believes that God’s knowledge is not intuitive, acquired, or differentiated (the views commonly hold by philosophers). This study aimed to adopt a critical view to examine Qāḍī’s viewpoint in the divine attributes’ domain – especially the divine knowledge attribute – and to show that despite its congruence with the outer appearance of some narrations, his viewpoint suffers from some internal weaknesses such as adherence to some questionable principles – such as belief in the overall difference between God and possible beings – and disagrees with some intellectual principles and narrations.