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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Investigations And Challenges Chapter 19: Faith as the Essence of Invitation of the Prophets (Part 4) A Review of the Previous Discussion So far, we have covered many subjects about faith. We said that, as inferred many Qur'anic verses, faith is the essence of the invitation of all the prophets of God. In particular, there were discussions about three subjects, viz.

“the truth behind faith,” “the degrees of faith” and “the jurisdiction of faith.” Regarding the jurisdiction of faith, we said that faith mentioned in the Book and the Sunnah and leads to man’s success in this world and the Hereafter, while the lack of which leads to eternal damnation, is not faith in anything.

In the same vein, we mentioned the obstacles to faith and the factors weakening it. One of these hindrances is the intellectual and academic skepticisms about God, the Prophet and the Resurrection, and in general, religion and religious issues. Because of the importance of this discussion, it is appropriate to embark on this discussion further.

“Prophetic Experience” and “Hermeneutic Interpretation” as Misgivings Aimed at Weakening the Faith The discussion begins here when they say, “A prophet, whoever he is, is a human after all, and the human perceptions and understandings are prone to err.

So, the perceptions of a prophet are subject to error and are thus not reliable.” On the contrary, it is said that the perceptions and knowledge of a prophet (at least in the realm of issues pertaining to religion) is through the way of the divine revelation and since it comes from God the Exalted and that He has Absolute Knowledge and ignorance has no place in His Essence, it is free from error and is reliable.

The deniers of the reliability of the perceptions of the Prophet (S) advance the issue of “prophetic experience” in reply. This is the explanation of their contention: Revelation is a kind of demonstrative knowledge, and an extensive mental state is experienced by the Prophet.