General Beliefs
By Ayatullah Jafar Sobhani

(Continued)
Negative (Salbi) Attributes

We recalled earlier that the attributes of God can be divided into two categories, those of Beauty (jamat) and those of Majesty (jalat). Those that pertain to perfection (kamal) are referred to as attributes of Beauty or positive (thubutl) attributes; while those that refer indirectly to God [by negating what He is not] and which relate to imperfection or deficiency, are referred to as attributes of Majesty or as negative (salbt) attributes.

The intention behind the formulation of negative attributes is to negate from the Divine Reality any possible susceptibility to imperfection, deficiency or inadequacy. Insofar as the Divine Essence is utterly self-sufficient and constitutes in itself absolute perfection, it is necessarily devoid of any attributes that derive from imperfection and dependency. From this point of view, Muslim theologians argue that God does not have a body, nor is He material; He is not a locus for any other entity, nor is He incarnate in any other entity whose features presuppose the imperfection and dependency proper to contingent, existent entities.

Among the other attributes deriving from imperfection is the capacity of being seen; for, in order to be seen, an object must fulfil the conditions of visual sense-perception, such as: being in a particular place; being illuminated by some source (that is, not being in darkness); and being separate, in essence, from the perceiving subject.

It is clear that such conditions are but the traces of an entirely corporeal and material frame of existential reference; they are utterly inapplicable to God, exalted as He is above all things. In addition, we can say that a 'god' that can be seen cannot escape from the following two conditions: either the totality of its being would be visible or else a part of its being; in the first case, the all-encompassing divine reality would be encompassed and delimited, and in the second, it would consist of parts both of which conditions are far removed from the divine reality, elevated in sublimity as It is.

The foregoing discussion has considered corporeal, sensible vision, but as regards the vision of the heart, that is, inward spiritual perception which sees by the light   of   perfected   faith,   this   is   of an

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