Aqa Ali Modarres’ Views on Monotheism and Ditheism

The foundation of Islamic insights is monotheism. Aqa Ali Modarres has an outstanding commitment to monotheism, and it is clearly reflected in his impactful works, the “Rasalah fi Al-Tawhid” and “Badayeá ol-Hekam”, especially in his answer to the question regarding personal unity of existence. The more he has elaborated on the answer, the more it has been subjected to misinterpretations. Reviewing the theory of Aqa Ali Modarres of personal unity of existence and scrutinizing the claims of the article “Abu al-Hassan Tabatabaei (Jelveh) and Aqa Ali Modarres on The Theory of Personal Unity of Existence” reveals the fundamental errors this article has made in the review and judgment of the Tehran Sage’s viewpoint. By reducing the fundamental principle of primacy of existence as well as interpreting transcendental wisdom statements out of their context, this article tries to prove Aqa Ali Modarres has completely denied the personal unity of existence. The main methodological and contextual shortcomings of this article are overlooking the transcendental wisdom principle of “transition from Bedayat to Nehayat” especially the transition from graduation to manifestation of existence and from specialized to more specialized as well as the most specialized graduation; not paying enough attention to move form causality to evolution; inadequate elaboration on similarities between difference of attributes and difference of complete separation; failure to notice the Sage’s emphasis on doctrine of exterior and interior; and most importantly neglecting the frequent terminology used by believers in unity of existence in describing levels of unity form public unity to unification, specialized unification, and more specialized unification. This will expose the misinterpretations in aforementioned article and highlights the importance of investigating the transcendental Sage’s view point merely in its context.