Theology and Creed

The Medahdeha are a wavering group whose beliefs are unsettled. They cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, and their convictions are shaken by doubts. They resist God’s proof and prefer their own opinions to his—like the Samaritan, who, with his limited understanding, fashioned a calf and led people away from the truth.

The rank of the “Hidden Name” is higher than that of the “Greatest Name,” and even the “Chosen Name.” The term *ism musta’thir* derives from the root ء-ث-ر, meaning “share,” “remnant,” or “grace,” and conveys the sense of something held exclusively and reserved. The full reality of these Names is disclosed to God alone and belongs to the realm of the “Absolute Unseen.”

Reason and ignorance, light and darkness, beauty and ugliness, peace and anxiety—all are created by God. Ugliness is inherent in a world that serves as a test, and cannot be something nonexistent or merely relative; in one respect, it is real and existent. God Almighty created both beauty and ugliness, and His original creation was pure beauty. But ugliness came to be classed as beauty through deviation from divine laws.

The status of created beings is distinct from that of the Creator. Created beings share in having existence, whereas the Creator brings existence into being and shares nothing with any created being; He is beyond description. To imagine the Creator in human terms is a mark of ignorance. Allah, the All-Powerful, brought existence into being and granted existence to all beings.

In the verse “کل شیء أحصیناه فی إمام مبین,” “احصاء” means recording something quantitatively and qualitatively, with all its calculations and attributes; providing a complete and precise record, down to every nuance and subtlety; making a comprehensive and complete record of it in knowledge; and encompassing and mastering it in all its general and particular details. The Clear Imam is the very reality of the wilayah of the Immaculate Imams, peace be upon them, in whom the knowledge of all things is encompassed.

The division of the universe into the divine realm (lāhūt), the realm of power (jabarūt), the realm of the unseen (malakūt), and the material realm (nāsūt) is a mystical classification, and religious texts contain no specific teaching about it. The levels of being of the Prophet (PBUH) and the Ahl al-Bayt (AS) are complex and mysterious; the cited hadiths reflect some of the wonders of their existence.

Describing the Lord through His sublime attributes prevents human understanding from being shut down and helps us recognise the transcendence of His essence. Trust in God grows when we understand that His attributes surpass our own grasp of His essence. His justice and wisdom exceed our imagination, affirming that creation and the afterlife have purpose.

The saying “العلم نقطة کثرها الجاهلون” points to the origin and unity of knowledge, which ultimately lead back to the Prophet and the Family of Muhammad (PBUH). True knowledge is unified and boundless; its apparent multiplicity arises from ignorance. The point is the center and source of creation, and a manifestation of divine knowledge.

The Sermon of Tatanjiyya is quoted by Hafiz Rajab Bursi in his book *Mashariq al-Anwar*. Its chain of transmission requires detailed study. As for its content, it contains clear, ambiguous and concise passages and belongs among the advanced discussions of wilayah (divine authority).

Divine power extends to impossibilities and is not limited by human ability. Bringing the universe into existence from nothing, placing the world inside an egg without changing their dimensions, and transcending time and space are examples of what God can accomplish. It is mistaken to compare divine power with human power; understanding it requires looking beyond time and space.

The narration “Indeed, God, Blessed and Exalted, is beyond His creation, and His creation is beyond Him” means that there is no likeness between the Creator and the created. God is not like any created being, nor is any created being like God. Everything other than God is created, and God is the Creator of all things. We use the word “name” in speaking of God because created beings have no other way to relate to Him; it does not mean that God needs the attributes of created beings.

God, blessed and exalted, possesses Names and Attributes. But we must not identify what belongs to God with God Himself, just as the heavens and the earth belong to God, yet the Divine Essence cannot be identified with them. The fact that the Most Beautiful Names belong exclusively to the Divine Essence affirms His sovereignty; it does not mean that the Essence is identical with a Name. Worshipping the Names and Attributes instead of the Essence is outright unbelief and shirk, because a name is distinct from the one named.

Human existence does not lie outside God’s existence, but this does not mean that Creator and creation are one. The light of a candle and the sun’s light are alike in meaning, but they are not one and the same: both are created by God, and each has its own distinct identity.

Treating essences as conceptual raises the question of whether reason, itself a conceptual construct, can confer conceptual status. To give identity to nothingness is to deprive being of its identity—and this does not undermine the unity of being.

No eye can see God, whether in this world or the Hereafter, for He is not confined by any limit. The universe and all who dwell in it remain ever subject to the One, the All-Subduing. In ambiguous reports, “seeing” refers to the manifestation of God’s special grace and attention toward His servants; and “meeting God” refers to the manifestation of His particular benevolence through the unveiling of His mysteries.

There is no evidence to support the claim that “God created everything, and that was that.” We can only say that the Creator of existence knows what He has created and what He will create, and that His knowledge encompasses all existence and all that He has brought into being—both what exists now and what will exist in the future.

Divine knowledge encompasses all creatures, though how it does so is beyond the limits of our understanding. God’s knowledge of what comes before and after His creatures reflects the incomparable majesty of His Essence. Divine knowledge encompasses creatures, the past and the future; it is mistaken to call knowledge created.

Three hadiths on divine knowledge in the chapter on knowledge in al-Shaykh al-Saduq’s *Kitāb al-Tawḥīd* appear contradictory and divergent, and require interpretation. God’s specific and universal knowledge cannot be reconciled with the Divine Essence, for the emanation of knowledge cannot be the emanation of the Essence. To describe the Divine Essence as knowledge without ignorance means that ignorance has no place in divine knowledge.