Abstract

Plato held that God's Knowledge of things consists of self-subsistent external forms, i.e. the same Ideas. This view has been criticized by Mulla Sadra and other thinkers. Ibn Sina maintains that since God Possesses the Knowledge of His Essence, which is the perfect cause of things, He Has also the knowledge of things as well. This Knowledge is a universal in nature one in the sense that it does not change with the change of the known. The philosophers succeeding Ibn-Sina criticized him on the grounds that his theory necessitates the imperfection of God's Essence.It also requires His Knowledge to be of the acquired type. Shaykh Ishraq holds that the Almighty Has the knowledge of all things, including all immaterial abstract entities and material objects by their objective existence.Ibn Sina has also been the target of other objections. For example, his ideas as to the presence of material things before the Almighty is criticized on the ground that materiality and presence cannot come together. Mulla Sadra demonstrates God's differentiated Knowledge on the basis of the principle of ' the truth in its simplicity contains all things' and argues that the Almighty Necessary's knowledge of all things is realized at the level of His Essence before the existence of objects. 'Allamah Tabataba'i demonstrates the same issue on the basis of God's ontological Absoluteness, which is required for the necessity of essential existence.