Allameh Ṭabatabaei’s Point of View on Religious Language

Abstract

Religious language is one of the most prominent issues in the contemporary religious studies. In this paper, I tend to clarify Allameh Ṭabatabaei’s view on religious language. Pursuing in his epistemological, ontological and Quranic approaches such as clear and allegorical revelations, esoteric commentary of Quran is our center of  attention. Some authors believe that although Quran uses ordinary language, it isn’t sufficient for deep understanding of it; therefore they have suggested new theories such as synthetic language or specific ordinary language. But it seems that if the ordinary language be construed rightly, there would be no requirement to those theories. It can be said that the Quranic language is ordinary one and the way of attaining to the deep layers of Quran is the purification of the soul. In this paper I attempt to show Allameh’s realistic point of view on religious language.