ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to show more clearly the mechanism through which the concept of imamate, human perfection, and sin work in Imami speculative theology. Explaining this mechanism helps in understanding, firstly, how different approaches to imamate can coexist, and secondly, that this concept is open to different acceptable interpretations depending on one’s ontological, epistemological, or anthropological system of thought. Mohammad Legenhausen, in his chapter in this edition, explains different understandings of imamate historically. This will be a more theological look at the same subject. Therefore, after explaining how the lack of an explicit orthodoxy in Islam renders a plurality of understandings of concepts in principle valid, I will briefly explain what human perfection and sin mean in Imami thought, which might regulate possible comparative studies between the two traditions.
