Determinism and Divine Agency According to Allamah Tabatabaei

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Doctorate graduate of Islamic Theology and Philosophy, Faculty of Theology, University of Tehran

2 Associate professor, Department of Islamic Theology and Philosophy, Faculty of Theology, University of Tehran

Abstract

The way God intervenes in the natural world is considered a major and long-standing issue in the realm of theology and philosophy of religion where efforts to resolve it has led to proposing various and, at times, opposing views, spanning from determinism to delegation. By employing a novel criterion to distinguish between various divine actions in the world, the current paper attempts to present and assess Allamah Tabatabaei’s approach as an Islamic determinist philosopher in regard to the topic and seeks to lay the groundwork for offering solutions in both deterministic and indeterministic models by revisiting the causal homogeneity principle in order to find a way out of dominant intellectual impediments. To that end, the paper serves to show that by extending the concept of causal homogeneity within a deterministic framework, one can attest to the direct interference of immaterial entities in the material world, whereas by resting upon the ‘principle of causal necessity’ and a particular attitude towards the principle of homogeneity within an indeterministic framework, one can defend the interference of immaterial causes in order to realize one of the possible probabilities.
 

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References

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Journal of Philosophical Theological Research
Volume 20, Issue 3 - Serial Number 77
Articles
September 2018
Pages 45-70

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