Thinking about God’s Essence and Attributes

TEHRAN (IQNA) – There are many Hadiths that say God’s essence (Dhat Allah) is known only to Him and we cannot know it so we should not think about it because it leads to Ilhad (disbelief).

On the other hand, there are Hadiths that say we can have an overall understanding of God’s attributes (Sifaat).

Hojat-ol-Islam Ali Amirkhani, a Quran and Hadith University scholar, recently discussed this in an address to a forum on the possibility of knowing God through intellect.

Following are excerpts from his speech at the forum:

There are different remarks about knowing God and about the limitations of intellect in knowing God and theorizing based on them is of special importance. This is among fundamental issues in religious and monotheistic discussions. There are different ideas about this issue among various ideological currents, including among philosophers, theologians, mystics, Sufis, Ash’aris, Mu’tazila, etc. So how to know God and how it is different from other forms of cognizance are very important.

According to Hadiths from the Ahl-ul-Bayt (AS) knowing God’s essence via the intellect in impossible, but knowing God indirectly and via his attributes and signs is possible.

In this kind of cognizance I know that God exists and God is different from all beings in the world. So the criterion for this cognizance is intellectual knowledge. In the discussions on knowing God, it is the intellect that understands everything from the beginning to the end and can convey it to others.

Many Hadiths say that we can know God via His signs. And there are many Hadiths that say we can know God via the intellect.

Imam Reza (AS) said that one can know God with signs and Ayahs and Imam Sadiq (AS) said people know God via the intellect.