Abstract

The rarest theory of God’s essential attributes is the theory of “conceptual and exemplary unity of essential attributes”, which is asserted in different books penned by Avicenna and Shaykh al-Ahsai. They adopted this approach based on certain theoretical basics, namely “generality of the notion of inherent attributes” and “impossibility of deriving different notions from a true indivisible notion”. However, since every independent notion associated with divine attributes contains different forms of significance and the theory of “conceptual synonymy of attributes” is challenged mainly in terms of semantic function, the present research objective is to prove that both of the theories cover the conceptual function of synonymous essential attributes in divine propositions by explaining and analyzing the semantic aspect of essential attributes in the light of their semantic synonymy. Avicenna first accepts “existence” as the first essential heavenly attribute and believes a more precise understanding of each essential attribute is contingent upon inclusion of God’s existence with a “privative” or “relative” notion or a combination of the two. However, using a different approach, Ahsai believes the semantic fruits of essential attributes rest on a positive concept and two relative aspects: negation of freeness of the self from perfection, freeness of God Almighty from contradictory attributes, and negation of similarities between divine attributes and earthly attributes. He believes there is an actual attribute that corresponds to each of God’s essential perfections, and Muhammad’s Truth carries and contains these actual attributes.