## 1. Faith and Reason



A foundational question in the philosophy of religion concerns the
relation between faith and reason. As with perhaps all religions, the
spectrum of Muslim responses is broad. Before looking at these
responses, it is important to note that 'reason' is used
in two distinct senses. In one sense, reason refers to the ability,
power or faculty by which we understand, judge and explain things.
Reason in this sense corresponds with our intellect
(*'aql*). In a second sense, reason refers to the
philosophical and scientific explanations and theories about the
things that the intellect understands, judges and explains. In this
sense, reason corresponds with science or philosophy. Analogously,
'faith' has at least two meanings. In one sense, it may
refer to an epistemic notion and mean to believe or to trust in
something, perhaps uncritically (*taqlid*), usually based
on the authority of some (religious) source. In a second sense, faith
may refer to a particular religion, understood as the body of
knowledge encompassed in one's sacred scriptures and religious
traditions as in the sense of the 'Islamic faith'. These
different senses of reason and faith in turn give rise to no less than
three distinct questions concerning what the relation between faith
and reason is:


1. What role, if any, does the unaided human intellect play in
acquiring religious knowledge?
2. What role, if any, does the intellect play in justifying specific
beliefs?
3. How should one reconcile conflicts between one's religious
belief and the finding of one's best science or philosophical
system?



As one may expect, these questions were raised and debated in the
Islamicate world.


### 1.1 Reason and religious knowledge



The first way that the faith-reason question may be understood
involves the extent, if any, to which the unaided human intellect can
discover the various claims of a religion, whether theological or
ethical. In answer to this question, Muslim philosophers and
theologians defended three major positions. One is that unaided human
reason is sufficient to reach true knowledge about what can (or needs
to) be known about God and our moral duties. A second position is that
unaided reason can discover at least the basic claims of a religion,
like God exists and is absolutely perfect, but this basic knowledge
must be augmented by truths that only a prophet can provide. The third
position is that human reason cannot reach the knowledge that religion
provides, and so a religious source is required for true knowledge
about God and what God demands of us.



A purported representative of the first position is the physician and
philosopher Abu Bakr al-Razi (865-925; see entry
on
 al-Razi).
 He is reported to have held that human reason is sufficient to
understand all that is necessary for a devout life, and thus scripture
is at best superfluous and at worse deceptive and a source of
dissension (A. H. Razi *Proofs of Prophecy*: 2.1 and
5.1, pp. 24-6 & 131-4). This is an extreme
 position.[1]
 At the other extreme some Muslim scholars in general dismissed the
use of unaided reason in religious matters. There must be religious
authority in the form of a prophet who teaches others what they should
know about God and who establishes rules that must be observed in
individual and social life. Such a position not only dismissed
independent reasoning about one's religion, but also discouraged
metaphorical interpretations of sacred writ. Between these extremes,
Muslim philosophers and theologians believed that while there is a
place for unaided reason in acquiring certain religious beliefs, a
need for scripture is also essential to that understanding, albeit
they disagreed about the nature and extent of that need. Let us begin
with the position of most of the Muslim philosophers.



Philosophers most generally defended the view that at least
individuals of sufficient intellect could independently acquire a
knowledge of all the fundamental claims of religion.They maintained
that non-philosophers who constitute the majority of people, in
contrast, must rely on religious sources. Those sources, however, the
philosophers continue, ultimately agree with what can be rationally
known, albeit in a way that describes philosophically correct views in
metaphors and symbols so as to be accessible to the masses. One may
include al-Farabi (d. 950), Ibn Sina (or
Avicenna, d. 1037), Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185) and Ibn Rushd (or
Averroes, d. 1198) among these philosophers.



Farabi appears to be the originator of the general view
of the Muslim philosophers (Farabi *Perfect
State*: 276-85 & *al-Milla* & b, PP
4-6). Humans divided into three classes based on their
intellectual capacities. One class is persuaded of divine truths
solely on the basis of demonstrative proofs. These proofs produce a
belief that is certain and are discovered independent of scripture.
The second class is persuaded on the basis of dialectical proofs.
These proofs produce a belief that is highly probable, and so
scripture is necessary to confirm the true beliefs and correct any
false ones. The final and the most numerous class consists of those
who are easily persuaded by rhetorical proofs involving images that
hold out threats of torment for non-belief and promises of pleasures
for belief. Scripture is of most use for this class, for it provides a
simplified version of the religious truths necessary for a devout
life, but now put into a language that captures the imagination of
even the most dull-witted. Thus, Farabi's
position has two elements:


1. the truths relevant to religion can be rationally known, and
yet
2. religious authority is also needed, albeit not by all.



Farabi's view can be found in Ibn
Tufayl's philosophical novel *Hayy ibn
Yaqzan* (HIY, especially 161-5). The novel
relates the story of a child raised by a deer on a desert island, and
what he was able to learn through unaided reason, and then his
subsequent encounter with a religious community. The story concludes
with the protagonist resigning himself to the fact that some people do
not want to be intellectually challenged. Ibn Rushd also endorses
Farabi's tripartite division of humanity in his
legal treatise, *The Decisive Treatise* (Ibn Rushd
*Decisive*: 1-12, esp. 8).



Some theologians gave a similar, but different, answer to this
question. They asked whether one who is mentally sound and has reached
the age of discernment is accountable before God for their religious
beliefs and practices, even if they have never heard the message of
Islam. Answering this question, the Mu'tazilite theologian,
al-Qadi 'Abd al-Jabbar (d. 1025) and Abu
Mansur al-Maturidi (d. 944), the eponymous
founder of the Maturidi school of theology, held that
individuals at the age of discernment are responsible in believing,
for example, that God exists, that God is just, that God sends
messengers, that there is life after death and that one should lead a
morally good life ('Abd al-Jabbar SUK: 62-8,
122-4, 563-6 and Maturidi KT: 3-7,
156-62; also see Hourani 1971: 129-39). A common position
among later Maturidi and Ash'ari theologians
slightly modified this view: In addition to the fundamental truths
about God and his relation to the world just mentioned, human reason
can verify that Muhammad was a genuine prophet. Having verified
Muhammad's prophecy, one now can go on to endorse all the claims
revealed in the Qur'an, which is different than merely
'believing by faith' (*taqlid*) since the
acceptance of the Quranic claims are grounded in an initial proof for
the veracity of the Qur'an as a revelatory source of knowledge
(Nasafi TA: II 12-28; Juwayni *Proofs*,
165-7; Ghazali *Moderation*, treatises
3-4; also see Frank 1989).


### 1.2 The role of reason in justifying specific beliefs



The first faith-reason issue concerned the role, if any, of unaided
reason in understanding general religious claims. The second issue
concerns the role of reason relative to a specific religion and has
two parts: (1) the role of reason in having a justified belief in
one's specific religion, like Islam, and (2) the role of reason
in interpreting a specific religion's sacred sources. As one
might expect, this second set of issues is closely tied to the first.
Consequently, the various responses to the second issue frequently
mirror those to the first, albeit with additional nuances.


#### 1.2.1 Reason and justified religious beliefs



Muslim philosophers and Mu'tazilite theologians, might broadly be
described as evidentialists. They held that reason, in the form of
rational first principles or proofs based upon them, is essential for
justified beliefs, even those found in religion, although in nuanced
ways. As for the philosophers, only those who have demonstrative
proofs of their beliefs are rationally and truly justified in those
beliefs. As for non-philosophers, insofar as they accept a
'true' religion--i.e., one that the philosopher would
accept on the basis of demonstration--and they do so based upon
either highly probably opinions or images from sacred texts that
symbolically capture truths that philosophers demonstrate, members of
these other two classes are likewise justified, to the extent that
they can be, in their beliefs.



In addition to knowledge of certain general religious claims, some
Mu'tazilite theologians extended this general knowledge to
specific credal beliefs (Frank 1978, esp. 124-9). Their strategy
was to observe that having come to recognize that God exists and has
certain attributes, one should further speculate about what God wants
from us. This speculation leads to certain general ethical axioms;
however, more importantly, it leads to the belief that such a wise and
powerful being would send a messenger, that is, a prophet, to make the
divine intentions known. Once one has reached this point, one would be
motivated to seek out self-proclaimed prophets and test them. Upon
having tested a prophet and identifying them as a true prophet, then
anything based upon that prophetic message would also be rationally
justified.



Muslim theologians who denied or limited the role of reason were
presented with a problem. Muslim philosophers and Mu'tazilite
theologians maintained, to varying degrees, something like the
following Evidentialist Premise:



(EP)
One is rationally justified in one's belief (as opposed to
believing out of fear, believing arbitrarily or even because it is
absurd) if and only if one has a reason for that belief that appeals
to the human intellectual capacity to acquire the truth about the
subject of that belief.


The philosophers and certain theologians leveled a challenge against
the Ash'arites, Maturidites and more traditional theologians like
Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (d. 855). Since with few exceptions these
latter held that reason is limited in its capacity to acquire those
truths or even is incapable, these thinkers either cannot be
rationally justified in their beliefs or at best they are only
partially justified. Moreover, if one holds a belief without some
rational justification, it appears as if one holds that belief
arbitrarily or even irrationally.



There were varying responses to this challenge. At the core of these
responses, often, is simply a denial of (EP). The theologians'
denial, however, is not obviously arbitrary or irrational, as they
note, since (EP) assumes that humans have the intellectual capacity to
acquire the truth about either general or specific religious beliefs,
and yet this issue is the very one at stake. In some cases, these
theologians suggested alternative models of justification. For
example, Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni (d. 1085) appears
to have had a coherentist theory of justification, at least with
respect to prophecy (Juwayni *Proofs*, 165-7; also
see Siddiqui 2019: ch. 4). For Juwayni, while reason alone is
unable to acquire the tenets of Islam, that inability does not make
those tenets irrational, in the sense of being contrary to reason;
rather, upon hearing the tenets, one determines that they are at least
coherent in which case one is justified in believing them.


#### 1.2.2 Reason and interpreting (*ta`wil*) religious sources



The second aspect to the question of what role reason plays in
justifying specific beliefs concerns hermeneutics, namely, what is the
role of reason in interpreting one's own sacred sources, like
the Qur'an and sayings of the prophet Muhammad? Within the
context of Islam, the issue is whether a Muslim must take the
Qur'an and prophetic traditions at face-value or should use
certain interpretative tools, such as metaphorical readings and
analogical reasoning, when approaching scripture and prophetic
sayings. On one side, there are positions like that of
Farabi. True religious beliefs are the symbolic
expressions of the philosophical truths that philosophy and science
provide. Hence when there is a divergence between philosophical
theories and religious teachings, one should keep in mind that
religious texts are not literal expressions of the truth and perhaps
more like 'noble lies' (Farabi *Perfect
State*: 276-85). On the other side of this issue, there is
the legal theorist Ibn Hanbal, who is usually associated with
the position that only the Qur'an and the sayings of Muhammad
are sufficient and necessary for an intellectually complete
understanding of God, the world and our place in it. Moreover, one
must simply accept the claims of these sources as literally true, even
the most anthropomorphic ones about God and the divine attributes,
such as those about the hands of God, God's speech and that God
is seated or established on the Throne. Between these two positions
there were a host of intermediate views.



For example, the Ash'arite theologian, Abu
Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), made room for a
metaphorical interpretation (*ta`wil*) of certain
passage from the Qur'an and the sayings of the prophets. In
particular Ghazali maintained that literal anthropomorphic
descriptions of God, particularly ones ascribing to God a body, had to
be rejected and interpreted metaphorically. Thus, in *On Moderation
of Belief* (I, 8), he divides Muslims into the general public and
the scholars. The general public should be disabused of any
anthropomorphic reading of God in the Qur'an, and if they ask
what such verses and sayings mean, they simply should be told it is
not theirs to investigate such matter. In contrast, Ghazali
continues, it is suitable for the scholar to pursue and to understand
metaphorically Qur'anic passages, such as "The Merciful is
seated/established on (*istawa 'ala*) the
Thrown" (20:5, trans. by authors), which suggest that God has a
body or at least is localized in some specific place. For
Ghazali it is unthinkable that the Qur'an could
contain contradictions, and yet he believes that he can rationally
prove that anything bodily must be subject to temporal becoming,
whereas God cannot be subject to temporal becoming. Consequently, for
Ghazali no bodily state can literally be ascribed of God on
pain of contradiction and yet again the Qur'an is free of any
contradiction. In general, Ghazali claims that any religious
claims that "the intellect judges impossible" (*ma
qada al-'aql bi-istihalatihi*) must be
interpreted metaphorically.



Ironically, the philosopher Ibn Rushd, who was a critic of
Ghazali, shared a similar view. In his legal work the
*Decisive Treatise* (Ibn Rushd *Decisive*: SSIII.B),
he notes that Islamic religious sources either treat some given
subject of a demonstration or they do not. If the religion does not
speak to a given subject, the demonstrated conclusion should not be a
matter of religious dispute and one is free to hold the position. If
the Islamic sources do treat a given subject of demonstration, then
the two either agree or disagree. If they agree, then again there
should be no religious dispute. If, however, there is a disagreement
between the literal sense of the religious sources and the conclusion
of a demonstration, then those intellectually capable can apply
metaphorical interpretation to reconcile the conflict.



The issue is how to determine which Qur'anic passages and
prophetic statements must be taken literally and which ones
metaphorically. Ibn Rushd's view concerning theoretical matters
treated in religion, though not in practical and ethical issues, is
that there simply is no consensus (*ijma'*). Muslim
scholars, for Ibn Rushd, simply do not universally agree as to which
scriptures and traditions must be taken literally and which can be
taken metaphorically. Hence, there is no religious basis for
precluding metaphorical interpretation of any text or prophetic saying
treating theoretical issues whose apparent meaning conflicts with a
demonstration. The only obligation on the religious scholar is that he
must not share metaphorical interpretations of sacred sources with
those who are incapable of grasping a demonstration. The greatest
proponent of Islamic philosophical mysticism, Ibn 'Arabi (d.
1240), also shared this inclusive view of scripture's intended
meaning. For him, every word, verse and chapter of the Qur'an
have an indefinite number of senses and interpretations, and God
intended all of them. Thus, in the *Meccan Revelations*, he
writes,



> 
> 
> When a meaning repeats itself for someone who is reciting the
> Qur'an, he has not recited it as it should be. This is proof of
> his ignorance. (cited in Chittick 2005: 18 = (Ibn al-'Arabi
> *al-Futuhat
>   
> 
> al-Makkiyya* (a), IV, 367.3)
> 
> 
> 


### 1.3 Conflicts between religious teachings and science/philosophy



The third faith-reason issue involves responses to apparent conflicts
between the teachings of one's specific religion and the
purported demonstrated conclusions of one's best science or
philosophical account. At the heart of this issue is the notion of
demonstration (*burhan*). A demonstration proceeds from
purportedly absolutely certain, necessary and true first principles
from which one validly deduces some conclusion. Since the conclusion
validly follows from purportedly absolutely certain, necessary and
true premises, the conclusion is likewise absolutely certain,
necessary and true (see Farabi's account of
certainty = MR07: 63-6; also see Black 2006). Since, for the
philosophers, the conclusions of demonstration are certain and
necessarily true, any claim apparently contradicting a demonstrated
conclusion cannot be literally true. Yet, within Islamic authoritative
sources there are claims that are at odds with some of the
philosophers' purported demonstrative conclusions. Few Muslim
philosophers were willing to say that the Qur'an and the sayings
of the prophets are simply false. Instead, many philosophers appealed
to their epistemic hierarchy of human intellectual capacities seen
above. For them, both Islamic religious sources and demonstrated
conclusion at heart express the same truth, although expressed
differently depending upon the intended audience.



Even if some theologians recognized the difficulty with taking all
religious statements literally, there still was pushback against the
philosophers and particularly their unquestioning faith in
'demonstrative' conclusions. Thus, several Muslim
theologians, like Ghazali, 'Abd al-Karim
Shahrastani (d. 1153) and Fakhr al-Din
al-Razi (d. 1210), to name a few, took it upon themselves to
familiarize themselves with the philosophers' demonstrative
method and show that even by the philosophers' own standards
they had not demonstrated their conclusions.



Ghazali's *Incoherence of the Philosophers*
(*Tahafut al-falasifa*) provides an excellent example
of this approach. There he vigorously criticizes the
philosophers' attempts to demonstrate twenty
philosophical-theological theses, arguing that in all cases the proofs
fall short of true demonstration. His strategy is to call into
question the supposedly self-evident, certain and necessary character
of the premises used in the philosophers' proofs. He does so by
arguing that either those premises fail to have these characteristics
and so are not first principles or, if a premise is not a first
principle, the philosophers have failed to demonstrate the
premise's necessity. While Ghazali believes that on at
least three counts the philosophers' positions lead to unbelief,
on several other issues he accepts the conclusion of the philosophers
even while denying their demonstrative character.



Ghazali's general concern in both the
*Incoherence* and other works where he criticizes the
philosophers is their claim to having demonstrated truths of religion
independent of sacred sources. That is because this position,
complains Ghazali, has led some of those with lesser
intellects to accept the philosophers' arguments uncritically,
and so think that they can dispense with religion and religious
sources (Ghazali *Deliverance*, 60-70,
83-6 and *Incoherence*, religious preface and
introduction 4). Ghazali's own position is that while
there is a duty to provide a rational defense of the basic tenets of
one's religion, this duty falls only on those intellectually
suited and religiously trained and must be prohibited of those who
lack this training (Ghazali *Moderation*,
introductions 1-3).


## 2. Proofs for the existence of God (Allah)



Among the basic religious beliefs that some Muslim theologians and
philosophers thought that reason alone could establish is the
existence of God. To this end various, Muslim thinkers developed
different proofs as well as criticisms of each other's
arguments. Here we consider three such arguments and sets of
objections: the argument from temporal coming-to-be, the argument from
the nature of necessity and possibility/contingency and the argument
from knowledge by presence.


### 2.1 An argument from temporal coming-to-be (*huduth*)



Muslim theologians, that is, proponents of kalam, and even
certain philosophers like as Abu Yusuf al-Kindi (d. ca.
866), had several arguments for the existence of God, all of which in
some way appeal temporal coming-to-be (see, for example,
Ash'ari TAAT: 6-8; Juwayni *Proofs*,
9-16; Ghazali *Moderation*, 27-41;
Shahrastani *Summa*, 1-25) and which fall under
the umbrella expression, 'kalam cosmological
argument'. William Lane Craig has defended and brought to the
attention of contemporary philosophers of religion the kalam
cosmological argument (see section in entry on
 cosmological arguments).
 In its simplest form, the argument runs like this:


1. Everything that begins to exist after not having
existed has a cause for its existence.
2. The world began to exist after not having
existed.
3. Therefore, the world has a cause for its
existence, which is God.



Premise (1)
 is just a particular instance of the general principle that nothing
comes from nothing. Within the medieval Islamic world, the principle
is associated with the notion of preponderation
(*tarjih*), which at least within the context of the
kalam cosmological argument, states that for any action, motion
or change some cause or reason exist for that action or change.



The more controversial premise is
 (2),
 for unlike the theologians, certain philosophers, like
Farabi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, maintained
that the world has existed infinitely into the past. Consequently,
these philosophers reject the world's coming to exist after some
point of not having existed. The theologians' response was
either simply to claim that the intellect asserts that the existence
of an infinity is rationally impossible or to show that positing an
infinity leads to consequences known to be rationally impossible.
Those who took the latter strategy drew upon the arguments of the late
Neoplatonic Christian philosopher, John Philoponus (d. 570; see entry
on
 Philoponus).
 Two examples should provide a sense of the general strategy.



First, according to the astronomy of the time, the world consists of
the Earth, which was thought to be (approximately) at the center of
the cosmos, and the various celestial bodies--the Moon, Sun, five
visible planets and stars--that were believed to orbit the Earth.
Now, assume that the world has existed infinitely into the past. In
that case, the various celestial bodies that apparently orbit the
Earth would have all made an infinite number of revolutions; however,
the celestial bodies have different periods. For instance, the Moon
orbits the earth approximately once a month, that is, twelve times a
year, while the apparent revolution of the Sun is only once a year.
Consequently, while the Sun has made an infinite number of apparent
revolutions around the Earth, the Moon has made twelve times the
rotations of the Sun, that is, twelve times infinity, and so seemingly
a greater number than that of the Sun. Since it is assumed that there
is nothing greater than infinity, reason recoils at the notion of a
number greater than that which nothing is greater. The theologians,
then, conclude that the assumption of the world's existing
infinitely into the past leads to absurdity and so must be
rejected.



Philosophers who accepted the eternity of the world rejected this
argument, claiming that the infinity in question is only a potential
infinity and not an actual one, that is, one in which all the members
of an actually infinite set would presently exist. As such, they
continued, there does not exist actual sets of revolutions that can be
compared, which had led to the absurdity. The theologians'
second kind of argument cuts off this form of escape. First, they note
that for the philosophers, species are eternal, that is, for example,
there have always existed human into the infinite past and there will
always exists humans into the infinite future. They then continue that
the leading philosophers, like Ibn Sina, believe that they
have demonstrated that the human soul continues to exist after the
death of the
 body.[2]
 In that case, if the world together with the human species existed
infinitely into the past, then even if only one human a day were to
die, there would presently and actually exist an infinite number of
human souls, and that number would increase infinitely as humans died
moving into the infinite future. In short, the distinction between
potential and actual infinities does not save the philosophers from
the purportedly absurd consequences. Thus, the assumption that the
world has existed infinitely into the past must be rejected.
Consequently, the world must have begun to exist after not having
existed, and so the second premise of the kalam cosmological
argument is secured.



We set aside the philosophers' defense(s) of the thesis that the
world always has existed infinitely into the past and merely note that
this issue was one of the most vigorously debated one between
theologians and philosophers in the Islamicate world.


### 2.2 An argument from necessity/possibility (*wujub/imkan*)



Certainly, one of the most discussed arguments for the existence of
God in the medieval Islamic world was Ibn Sina's
*Burhan al-Siddiqin*, which can be translated as
'the demonstration of the truthful' (Avicenna
*al-Najat*, 261-5 & 271-3 = MR07:
211-16 & ITN1: 4.16-20; see also Morewedge 1979; Mayer
2001; McGinnis 2010b: 163-8; Byrne 2019 and Zarepour 2022). Ibn
Sina's proof is unique in that it does not appeal to
the impossibility of infinite causal series, as most cosmological
arguments, and even entertains the possibility of an actual infinity
of causes existing simultaneously, although the argument ultimately
shows that such a causal series is impossible. Additionally, it shows
that the world is causally dependent upon God for its existence at
every moment that it exists, even infinitely into the past.



The proof is embedded within Ibn Sina's own modal
metaphysics (see entry on
 Ibn Sina's metaphysics).
 He began by laying out the logical space when considering existents,
and conceptually distinguishes between a necessary existent through
itself (*wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi*) and a
possible or contingent existent through itself (*mumkin
al-wujud bi-dhatihi*). The necessary existent through
itself would be an entity whose existence is self-explaining and so
exists simply on account of what it is--it cannot not exist. In
contrast, a possible existent in itself exists on account of something
other than itself (*bi-ghayrihi*)--it can not exist, and
so there is something other that explains why it exists when it does.
Again, these distinctions are merely the logically possible ways of
thinking of existents. We can safely take it that at least some
things, perhaps all things, are possible existents in themselves, for
certainly most things around us, considered in themselves, are
indifferent to whether they exist or do not exist. The question is
whether the conceptual space of the necessary existent through itself
is empty or occupied.



To this question, Ibn Sina begins by considering what would
even count as such an existent. At least one feature of such an
entity, Ibn Sina argues, is that it must be absolutely
simple. His argument assumes two modest mereological claims: one, a
whole (*jumla*) exists through its parts and, two, parts are
other than the whole. Now assume that the whole of the necessary
existent through itself is not simple and so consists of parts. On the
basis of the first mereological assumption, if the whole of the
necessary existent through itself consisted of parts, then its
necessary existence would be *through those parts*; however,
from the second assumptions those parts are *other than* the
whole. Consequently, the whole of the necessary existent through
itself would be necessary through another. To be 'through
another', however, is to be through what is *not* itself.
We have a contradiction: the whole of the necessary existent
*through itself* exists *through not itself*. Ibn
Sina concludes, the necessary existent through itself,
should it exist, must be simple. Again, Ibn Sina is not
claiming that anything meets this description. He is merely describing
what would count as a necessary existent through itself. It is still
an open question whether anything exists as absolutely simple and
necessary through itself.



With these preliminaries in place, we turn to Ibn
Sina's proof proper. Clearly, something, *x*,
exists, and so must be either a necessary or a possible existent
through itself--these exhaust the possibilities. If *x* is
a necessary existent through itself, the argument is complete. If
*x* is a possible existent through itself, then Ibn
Sina asks us to consider *x* along with all and only
the other possible existents through themselves, *y*,
*z* ... n, which currently exist. Let the whole of all and
only things that are possible existents in themselves be *W*.
Since *W* currently exists, it itself must be either a
necessary or possible existent in itself, given Ibn
Sina's modal ontology. *W* cannot exist as
necessary through itself, since it consists of the parts *x*,
*y*, *z* ... *n*, which are possible
existents, and as seen what is a necessary existent through itself
cannot have parts but is absolutely simple. Consequently, *W*
is possible through itself but exists through another. This other,
*o*, either is included within *W* or is outside of
*W*. If *o* is within *W*, then, because
*o* exists, it is either a necessary or a possible existent
through itself. It cannot be a necessary existent through itself,
since *only* possible existents were included in *W*,
and so there would be a contradiction. Likewise, *o* cannot be
a possible existent through itself, for it is through *o* that
*W* and so all the members of *W* exist, which includes
*o*. Thus, *o* would exist through itself, and so would
be a necessary existent through itself. Even if one allowed circular
causation, which Ibn Sina subsequently rebuts, *o*
ultimately, albeit indirectly, still would be necessary through
itself. We assumed, however, that *o* was a possible existent
through itself, a contradiction. Since *o* cannot exist in
*W* either as a necessary or as a possible existent through
itself on pain of contradiction, and yet those are the only
conceptually possible ways something can exist, *o* must exist
outside of *W*. Since *W* included all and only possible
existents through themselves, the only thing outside of *W* is
the Necessary Existent through itself, which Ibn Sina
identified with God.


### 2.3 An argument from knowledge by presences (*'ilm huduri*)



The discussion of proofs for the existence of God by Sadr
al-Din Muhammad Shirazi, simply known as
Mulla Sadra (d. 1636), is very much embedded within
his own process ontology (see
 section on the proof in the entry on Mulla Sadra).
 That ontology itself is an outgrowth of his mystic-inspired
philosophical vision of religion, which gives precedence to the direct
experience or presence of God. While he believes that there is a
definite proof for God, he is skeptical of the earlier traditional
arguments for God. In most general terms, his concern with earlier
proofs is that they all proceed from the existence of something other
than God and then infer to the existence of God, and yet God is the
very ground for the existence of everything else. If anything, God is
proof of that other. More specifically, Mulla Sadra
criticizes the fact that all earlier proofs begin with certain
concepts or essences, like necessity and possibility, which are
mental, and then illicitly infer from concepts of things to their
existence, which is extra-mental. This claim is even true for the
kalam cosmological argument, which begins with the concept of
'the world', and then from the assumption that that
concept refers and so exists infers the existence of God. For
Mulla Sadra one simply cannot move from mere concepts
to existence--one must begin with existence itself--and so
all of these earlier arguments fail.



Mulla Sadra's own 'proof' for the
existence of God is less a proof for God's existence than a
pointer that directs one to an experience that one already has and
then clarifies that experience. It would be analogous to one who has
experienced frogs, toads and salamanders, but then claims that they
have never experienced an amphibian. The proof that one has
experienced amphibians is to lead them to recognize that their
experience of frogs, toads and salamanders is an amphibian-experience.
In this vein, Mulla Sadra draws on the Qur'anic
verse--"God (Allah) is witness that there is no god
but He" (Qur'an 3.18). He suggests that we all have
experienced God, even if we have not recognized that the experience is
about God. That is because existence never can be negated or denied.
For even if there is non-existence, there is a sense that *there
is* something, and while as simple as it might be, that something
exists. There simply cannot *not* be existence argues
Mulla Sadra, and indeed the experience or knowledge of
this existence is present to everyone. Nothing, then, stands above
existence (not even non-existence), and yet God just is that existence
above which nothing stands. For Mulla Sadra existence
is not something static but dynamic, a single reality that varies in
intensity and modulation (*tashkik*). God is existence at
its greatest intensity and perfection. To be sure, while the
experience or belief *that* there is this existence is basic
for everyone, it is not necessary for everyone to experience this
existence *as* God. To be sure, recognizing this existence
*as* God might take long practice and training as prescribed by
Sufi masters. Still, one's experience of this existence as God
and consequent belief that it is God, which follows upon a knowledge
by presence, is for Mulla Sadra, properly basic and in
need of no further proof.


## 3. God and the universe: creation and conservation/maintenance of the universe



A question closely related to the existence of God is that of
God's relation to other existents, that is, the universe. There
are two distinct but related aspects to this question. The first is
whether God is the cause of the universe's existence, for there
have been thinkers, like Aristotle, who believe both that God (or at
least a first unmoved mover) exists and is related to the cosmos,
while denying that God is the cause of the universe's very
existence. The question here is whether God is a creator. The second
aspect to the question of God's relation to the universe assumes
that God is a creator and further asks, "What is God's
immediate and present causal relation to the universe?" Some
thinkers, like deists, maintain that God creates the universe and then
proverbially steps back and lets the world continue on its own like a
well-made clock. Others, in contrast, hold that at every moment that
the world exists, it is causally and ontologically dependent upon
God's conserving power and should God remove his proverbial
hand, the cosmos would slip into nothingness and oblivion. Muslim
philosophers and theologians alike had decided views on both of these
issues.


### 3.1 Creation



Muslim theologians and philosophers, with rare exceptions, agreed that
God is a creator and that the cosmos' existence is in some way
causally dependent or grounded upon God. (Ibn Rush, who follows
Aristotle and denies that God is strictly an efficient cause of the
world, is clearly an outlier.) What was at issue among these thinkers,
and where there was virulent disagreement, was the nature of this
causal dependence and grounding. There were three competing models to
explain God's divine creative act. Many, but not all,
philosophers viewed the world as emanating or flowing
(*fayadan*) from the very being of God. Theologians
as a group favored a model of temporal coming-to-be, occurrence or
origination (*ihdath*), which frequently resulted in
some form of occasionalism. Finally, the third model presents creation
as a manifestation (*mazhir*) of one single reality, a
paradigm that Sufis or thinkers with a mystical orientation mainly
upheld. Closely aligned with the nature of God's causal relation
to the world is the issue of the age of the universe, and particularly
whether the cosmos has existed infinitely into the past. While the
question of the world's age is not the primary focus here, a
particular answer to it frequently is tied to a given model of the
divine creative act. Let us consider each of these models.


#### 3.1.1 Creation as emanation (*fayd*)



Many of the Muslim philosophers, although again not all, adopted some
version of creation by 'emanation' (*fayd* or
*fayadan*) to explain God's causal relation to
the universe. In general, the emanation thesis makes two claims:


1. that the universe proceeds from God eternally and
2. that God's causation is mediated so that lower things come
from higher ones, not directly from God.



The details of this general thesis frequently differed among different
thinkers. Here we consider the details of Ibn Sina's
version of emanation.



We have seen Ibn Sina's proof for the existence of the
Necessary Existent through itself, which in effect shows that at any
instant that the universe, understood as the whole of all
possible/contingent things, exists, God must be conserving it in
existence. We have also seen his proof for divine simplicity (see
 SS2.2).
 Ibn Sina believes that these two doctrines further imply
that God's creative act must be eternal, and so likewise the
effect of that creative act must also be eternal. In that case, the
cosmos, if not eternal, is at least sempiternal
(*sarmadi*) and perpetual (*dahr*) (Acar 2010).
While Ibn Sina has a number of independent proofs by which
he argues that the world has always existed (Avicenna MetaH: 9.1 &
PhysH: 3.11), one need merely consider how he conceives the
world's relation to God and the nature of God's creating
to grasp why he held this position. His account is embedded within his
discussion of God's knowledge of the world (Avicenna MetaH: 8.6
[6-22] & 8.7).



One of the divine attributes is knowledge. In human intellects,
knowledge occurs when we interact with an already existing world, and
the things in the world in some way act upon our intellects so that
our potential to understand is realized and our intellect in a sense
receives some concept that it previously did not have. For numerous
reasons such an account of intellect cannot apply to the deity. First,
God is free of potentiality, inasmuch as potentiality refers to
something possible or contingent, and God as the Necessary Existent in
itself is outside of the whole of possible existents. Second, if God
were to receive anything, there would be both that which is received
and what receives, and so God would be composite, which is impossible
given Ibn Sina's doctrine of divine simplicity. Faced
with these issues Ibn Sina introduces a different model of
divine knowledge, which additionally explains God's creative
act.



According to Ibn Sina's model, what God knows directly
and primarily is the divine self. Because God is perfect, and indeed
above perfection, God must know himself perfectly. In that case, he
must know that he is the ultimate cause and grounds of all existence,
but in order to know a cause perfectly, one must likewise know the
effect of that cause perfectly, which just is the cosmos in this case.
Unlike with human knowledge, where our knowledge of a thing,
*x*, is in some way *caused by* *x*'s
existence, in divine knowledge God's knowledge of **x*
causes *x** to exist. In other words, there emanates from
God's self-knowledge the very existence of the cosmos, which Ibn
Sina identifies with the order of the good. Since God
existed infinitely into the past and will exist infinitely into the
future and is always self-knowing, the emanation of the cosmos must
likewise have existed infinitely into the past and will continue
infinitely into the future.



Not merely does Ibn Sina think that God must create
eternally, he also thinks it is all but heresy
(*ilhad*) to claim that God started to create at
some first moment in the finite past (Avicenna PhysH: 3.11 [9]). That
is because if God were not creating the cosmos eternally, there would
be some time when the divinity is not willing the creation of the
world and some time when it is willing the creation of the world.
Consequently, there would be a change in the divine will, and so God
would have changed. Whatever is subject to change, Ibn Sina
continues, must be composite in some way, for there is that which
perdures throughout the change and that which is either lost or comes
to be. The idea of temporal creation is thus incompatible with divine
simplicity, and to adopt it is for Ibn Sina is to forgo the
doctrine of God's oneness/uniqueness
(*tawhid*), which is central to Islam.



There is one further point about Ibn Sina's conception
of God's relation to creation that should be made, namely, the
extent to which Ibn Sina's deity creates as an act of
volition. For Ibn Sina a willful agent (1) recognizes the
action it is doing, (2) is not forced to act and (3) is content or
satisfied (*ridan*) with its action (Avicenna MetaH: 9.4
[3]). Ibn Sina distinguishes an act of will from either an
act of intention (*qasd*) or an act of nature
(*tab'*). God's act is not by way of nature,
since such actions proceed from the agent independent of knowledge and
consent, and yet there is nothing about the Necessary Existing through
itself that it does not perfectly know and to which it does not
perfectly consent. Ibn Sina likewise denies that God acts
intentionally. That is because intentional actions involve the
agent's conceptualizing some good, then a separate act of
acquiring that good and finally the good that is acquired.
Consequently, only an agent who is composite and not simple acts out
of intention, but again Ibn Sina's deity is absolutely
simple. These considerations likewise explain why for Ibn
Sina, God's creating does not, and indeed cannot,
require choice among options, and yet it is a free act of the will. It
is a free, precisely because God knows he is creating, consents to
that creation and in no way is forced to create.


#### 3.1.2 Creation as origination (*idath*) after non-existence



The theologians were not impressed with the emanationist account of
God's creative act. Despite Ibn Sina's move to
re-interpret volitional action, emanation seemed to the theologians to
be little more than an act of nature, as if the sun were to know and
to be glad that it shines, but also having no choice in the matter. A
free act of the will, they maintained, essentially involves choice,
and so any action not involving choice is not free. The theologians
were likewise not impressed with arguments from simplicity that
concluded that if God were to choose, God would not be simple. For
some of them, like the early Ghazali, were happy to deny the
strong conception of divine simplicity, which many philosophers
favored, since it seemed contrary to their belief that God has a
number of distinct divine attributes, like life, power, knowledge and
will (McGinnis 2022).



A potentially serious challenge to the theologians came in explaining
a change in the divine will, namely, the change from
willing-not-to-create to willing-to-create. The issue now is what
caused that change in God, for if God is the Cause of causes, then
nothing outside of God could explain that change of will, whereas if
creating is essential to God, it is no longer clear how the
theologians' position substantially differs from some version of
emanation. Ghazali provided what becomes the standard
Ash'arite theological response: From all eternity God freely
willed the creation of the world at the moment that it comes to be
(Ghazali *Incoherence*, disc. 1, [13]). Thus, if one
imagines the whole of time as forming a timeline, where God creates at
some given moment, *t* then at every moment on that timeline,
God wills the creation of the world at *t*. Of course, God
could have willed from all eternity to create at some moment other
than *t* or indeed not to create at all. Regardless of the
case, there would have been no change in the divine will.



There was push back against this account of the immutability of
God's eternal will from multiple directions, perhaps the most
pressing is that it only changes the focus of the original concern,
namely that there still must be a cause of God's willing some
given moment to be the first moment of creation. More specifically,
assume that God eternally willed to create our universe some fourteen
billion years ago. Of course, if God is truly omnipotent (and this
divine attribute was non-negotiable for Ash'arite theologians),
then God eternally could have willed to create the world fifteen or
sixteen billion years ago or even as early as ten-thousand years ago.
Indeed, there are an infinite number of moments, all of which seem
equally likely candidates for when God could have created our cosmos.
Thus, either there is some cause for God's choosing to create at
the moment he does or the choice is haphazard and random and so not
the act of an agent acting from knowledge. In short, either there is a
reason for God's creating at the moment that he does--and
so God's action is caused--or there is no reason--and
so God's action is without reason, and so is irrational. Neither
option seems appealing.



Ghazali had a response, which again became the standard one
among Ash'arites (Ghazali *Incoherence*, disc. 1
[45-6]). According to him, the essential function of the will is
simply to choose among indiscernibles independent of any cause for the
particular choice made. Of course, there is a sense in which the
choice is 'arbitrary', but only in the sense that the
action is a result of the will and nothing else. The standard example
of this point is that of a starving man presented with identical
pieces of food, who is also equally disposed to all of them, e.g., one
piece is not closer to the man nor is the man either left- or
right-handed, etc. The man will certainly take one piece and eat
despite lacking any reason for taking that particular piece of food,
and yet assuredly the act is one of a rational agent, for only an
imbecile under these circumstances would starve in indecision. This
general account of will holds not only for humans but also for God.
Thus, maintained Ghazali, from all eternity God wills to
create (and so God's will does not change), yet purely as an act
of the will does God will to create at the particular moment that he
does (for that, according to Ghazali, is exactly what it
means to be a rational volitional agent).


#### 3.1.3 Creation as manifestation (*mazhir*) of a single reality



A yet third way that the world's dependence upon God was
envisioned within the Islamicate world is that of Mulla
Sadra, who drew inspiration from Ibn 'Arabi
(Mulla Sadra *Penetrations*, 68-71; also
see Rahman 1975: 59-63 and Kalin 2014: 104-19). Mulla
Sadra's account appeals to his theory of
*tashkik al-wujud* (literally, 'the ambiguity
of existence', but which contemporary scholar commonly label
'the modulation of existence') as well as his novel notion
of 'substantial motion' (*al-haraka
l-jawhariyya*). (See the
 section on monism and pluralism in the entry on Mulla Sadra.)



Both notions are complex and even to provide a general sense of how
Mulla Sadra conceives God's causal relation to
creation would be a move away from the philosophy of religion into
general metaphysics. Still, brief, even if inadequate, comments are
warranted. As for the modulation of existence, according to Mulla
Sadra, God is existence at existence's maximally
perfect, eternal and unchanging limit, and only God is perfect,
infinite, eternal and unchanging. Creation is the manifestation of
existence at degrees that fall short of the divine infinite existence.
This is Mulla Sadra's doctrine of the
'modulation of existence'. Mulla
Sadra's doctrine of 'substantial motion'
complements this ontology. It is the idea that all changes, whether
change of location, state or the like, are ultimately the result of
continuous change in the very substance and essences of things. This
view is radical in that Mulla Sadra is suggesting that
absolutely nothing persist through change. There are no perduring
matter, forms, species and essences. Everything, apart from God, is in
a constant state of evolution. Not random evolution, to be sure, but
unceasing evolution directed toward God with creation forever becoming
more godlike.



Given the doctrines of the modulation of existence and substantial
motion, Mulla Sadra offers a unique response to the
question of the world's age. Since the very substances and
essences of things are in a state of constant change, nothing other
than God is eternal, existing infinitely into the past and into the
future. Instead, everything other than God, and this includes the
universe as a whole, comes to exist after not having existed. Thus,
among created things there simply can be no existent, such as the
universe itself, that has persisted infinitely into the past.
Consequently, with the theologians, Mulla Sadra agrees
that creation must be viewed in terms of temporal coming to be, in the
sense of coming to be after not having existed. Be that as it may, his
conception of substantial motion also allows, in the spirit of the
emanationists, that infinitely into the past and infinitely into the
future God is the wellspring of existence constantly creating with
creation constantly evolving. Thus, while God's creative act can
be eternal, nothing in the creaturely order, like matter, forms or
essences, remains the same as to have always perdured.


### 3.2 God's conservation of the universe



Muslim theologians and most, but not all, Muslim philosophers agreed
that the world cannot conserve its own existence and so its existence
at every moment that it exists is in some way dependent upon God. The
real issue for these thinkers is what role, if any, do creatures play
in the ongoing processes that constitute the world? Specifically, do
or can creatures have causal powers or is God not merely the Cause of
causes but the only Cause? Broadly, there were three responses to this
question: that of the philosophers, which appeals to their theories of
essential causation in the form of emanation and natural causation
among creatures; that of the Mu'tazilite theologians, which tends
toward divine occasionalism yet reserved some causal efficacy for
rational agents; and that of the Ash'arites and Maturidite
theologians, which is also occasionalist, but reserves all or at least
virtually all causal efficacy for God alone. Here we focus primarily
on the philosophers' theory of essential causation and the
theory of occasionalism that the theologians shared.


#### 3.2.1 Essential causation and providence



Philosophers such as Kindi, Farabi, Ibn
Sina and Ibn Rushd all adopted some form of essential or
natural causation, some more influenced by the Neoplatonic
emanationist framework, others less influenced by that framework
(Kindi RKF: 214-37 = MR07: 1-16;
Farabi *Perfect State*, ch. 8; Avicenna PhysH:
bk. 1.5 (= MR07: 156-63) & 1.9-12 and Ibn Rushd
*Metaphysics*, 105-12 & *Questions*,
11-14). (Ibn Rushd explicitly rejected emanation, whether from
God or from creatures, while allowing that creatures have natural
causal powers, i.e., that their natures were the source of actions
that are strictly speaking their own; see Kogan 1985, esp. ch. 3 and
5.) For present purposes, we focus on Ibn Sina's
emanationist-influenced theory of causation, since it would become
both the preferred approach of supporters as well as the preferred
target of detractors in the post-Avicennan period. Ibn
Sina's proof for the existence of the Necessary
Existent through itself is set up in terms of explaining the existence
of the whole of all possible/contingent things that exist at any given
moment. Given its setup, that proof likewise shows that the
world--understood as all the possible things that have, presently
do or will exist--is dependent upon God as that which conserves
it in existence at every moment that the world exists. The causal
mechanism explaining this dependency relation again is emanation,
where, on Ibn Sina's own unique theory of emanation,
it is a possible existent that emanates from the Necessary Existent in
itself.



Here it is worth noting that for many philosophers, while ultimately
everything in the world traces its existence back to the divine
emanation, God is not the *immediate* cause of everything.
Instead, God is only the immediate cause of a single effect,
identified with the First Intellect. Ibn Sina is adamant on
this point: 'From the One only one proceeds' (Avicenna
MetaH: 9.4 [5]; also see Amin 2020 and Dadikhuda 2020). Still, from
that one effect a plethora of effects, i.e., other possible existents,
cascade downward, all of which are mediately but ultimately dependent
on God for their conservation and their continued existence at every
moment that they exist. In other words, the created order overflows
from the Necessary Existent in coherent grades of existents, namely, a
hierarchy of immaterial creatures, like intellects or angels, followed
by the material realm. In each case the higher-grade functions as the
immediate causal principle of the next lower grade.



This emanationist cosmology is rooted in the Neoplatonic principle
that "every activity in the world is in some sense double
insofar as it possesses both an inner and an outer aspect" (see
entry on
 neoplatonism).
 The inner aspect is the thing's nature, which is the principle
and cause of those activities that are essential to being a certain
kind of thing. For example, the inner activity of a tree, which the
tree's nature determines, gives rise to its producing the shape,
leaves, fruit etc. specific to that kind of tree. Another common
example is fire's burning cotton, for fire's nature is to
burn, while cotton is of a nature that when in contact with fire, the
cotton is burnt. Our world, for the philosophers, then, is a network
of possible existents each having causal powers specific to their
kind, all of which are ultimately dependent upon God for their
existence.



Finally, while Ibn Sina insists that God is not acting with
the intention of the world's good, our world still is the
beneficiary of God's providence. That is because in knowing
himself God knows the order of the good in the most perfectly possible
way, and God's self-knowledge, as seen in the discussion of Ibn
Sina's account of creations (see
 SS3.1.1),
 is his very act of emanation. Consequently, what emanates from him is
an order that is the most perfectly possible commensurate with the
chain of possible existents. This optimal ordering of existents, whose
reality is grounded in the Necessary Existent, just is, for Ibn
Sina, providence (*'inaya*).



Here it is certainly worth noting that, for Ibn Sina, and
others like Farabi and Ibn Rushd (Farabi
*Perfect State*, SSSS6-7, Avicenna MetaH: 8.6
[6]-8.7 and Ibn Rushd *Metaphysics* *ad* Textus
51), God does not know particulars in their particularity, e.g., that
you are reading this sentence at this very moment; rather, God knows
particulars only universally. Moreover, God does not act for our sake
such that our good is the final end of God's creative act, even
thought we are the benefactors of the divine goodness
(Farabi *al-Siyasa*, 47-8 = MR07:
91-2 [PP 31-2]; Avicenna MetaH: 8.3 [1-3]
& *al-Najat*, 146-9 = MR07: 216-19 and Ibn
Rushd *Metaphysics* *ad* Textus 52). Despite these
caveats, Ibn Sina believes that God's universal
knowledge is sufficient to ensure that



> 
> 
> not even the weight of a dust speck, whether in the heavens or on the
> Earth, escapes your Lord's notice (Qur'an 10:61).
> (Avicenna *al-Najat*, 247 = MR07: 217).
> 
> 
> 



Thus by Ibn Sina's lights divine providence is still
ensured. Ibn Rushd makes a similar point about divine providence (Ibn
Rushd *Metaphysics* *ad* Textus 52).


#### 3.2.2 Occasionalism



Many Muslim theologians viewed the philosophers' idea of natures
with causal powers as one that impugned God's omnipotence and
his divine sovereignty over all that is. In addition, they found the
philosophers' argumentation for essential or natural causation
wanting. First, Muslim theologians were not impressed with either the
theory of emanation or the philosophers' account of essential or
natural causation. In the *Incoherence of the Philosophers*,
after faithfully presenting the philosophers' discussion of
emanation, Ghazali says,



> 
> 
> What they have said is arbitrary and really just shadows in the dark.
> Were someone to utter this while dreaming, we would think they were
> delirious! (Ghazali *Incoherence*, disc. 3 [48])
> 
> 
> 



As for the philosophers' theory of natures and natural
causation, even before Ghazali, Abu Bakr
al-Baqillani (d. 1013), a rough contemporary of Ibn
Sina's and whom Ghazali subsequently
follows, challenged the philosophers' account of natures
(Baqillani *al-Tamhid*, 34-47 and
Ghazali *Incoherence*, disc. 17). These theologians
note that the philosophers' reason for insisting on natures with
causal powers and natural necessitation is purportedly drawn from
empirical observations: One regularly observes, for example,
fire's contact with cotton and the burning of the cotton or the
imbibing of alcohol and the intoxication of the imbiber and a
multitude of other such regularities. The philosophers maintain that
these regularities require that the nature of fire, for example,
causes the cotton to burn because the nature of cotton is to be so
affected and similarly for the rest of regularities in the natural
order. Baqillani and Ghazali push back on
this last assumption. We do not observe causal connections, they note,
but merely constant conjunctions: one event followed by another. While
natural causation could explain these constant conjunctions,
God's habit (*'ada*) or custom of creating a
given event after another could equally explain them.



In place of natural causation, many Muslim theologians held some
theory of occasionalism (Fakhry 1958 and Perler & Rudolph, 2000:
13-124). For them, God is not simply the Cause of causes, he in
fact is the only cause. God not merely brought the world into
existence at some moment in the past, but indeed at every instance, he
re-creates the world anew. In its extreme form, there is only the
illusion of a continuity between moments or a creature's
persisting through time. Changes in the world, thus, are solely the
result of God's re-creating the world slightly differently at
each subsequent moment. Consequently, nothing other than God can truly
be an agent of change or action.



Some might find the theologians' theory of occasionalism
metaphysically exotic. For many theologians, it was simply an
implication of God's absolute omnipotence: God truly has
*all* power, and so no concession is made to creatures (see
Wolfson 1976: VII.I). Even Ghazali, who concedes that humans
have a modicum of power, hastens to add that when compared to
God's omnipotence our power resembles impotence
(Ghazali *Moderation*, 99). Baqillani
himself (Baqillani *al-Tamhid*,
34-47) has a more philosophically rather than theologically
engaged answer. He argues that occasionalism is metaphysically
preferable to the theory of natural causation on the grounds of a
Principle of Paucity: Given two theories each of which equally well
explains the same phenomena, the simpler theory should be preferred.
The philosophers must posit at least two ontologically distinct kinds
of causes: divine causation and natural causation (which itself
burgeons into a passel of further ontologically distinct kinds of
causes). In contrast, occasionalism, Baqillani
observes, needs posit only one kind of cause, God, and so should be
preferred.


## 4. Prophecy and Miracles



Assuming that God exists and stands in some ontological relation with
creation, does God, in some way, directly make his will and
providential care known to us? For Muslim theologians and some
philosophers, humans receive guidance in how to construct a
well-ordered society through the message of prophets. These messages
are a source of correct beliefs about God, how we should live, our
place in the cosmos and our ultimate destiny in the hereafter. Given
the centrality of prophecy (*nubuwwa*) to Islam, two distinct
questions faced Muslim philosophers and theologians alike. One is
justifying and even explaining prophecy as a source of true justified
beliefs. The other is identifying a true prophet and distinguishing
him from a charlatan, trickster or even sorcerer.


### 4.1 Prophecy



Concerning the first issue of justifying and explaining prophecy,
proponents of prophecy were faced with a challenge. Since humans are
rational, presumably they can acquire knowledge of reality and the
rules of conduct regarding their individual and social life on their
own. Thus, one may ask, "Why are prophets necessary for
acquiring true beliefs and proper rules of conduct?" Indeed,
Muslims did encounter opposition to their belief in prophecy, ranging
from those who claimed it was redundant--at least as the,
admittedly hostile, reports about Abu Bakr al-Razi
relate--to those who thought it was simply impossible--a
position that Muslim theologians ascribed to Ibn al-Rawandi
(b. ca. 815) and the *Barahima*, arguably the Brahmans of
India (see Stroumsa 1999). Detractors of prophecy formulated the
problem regarding the need for prophecy as a dilemma (A. H.
Razi *Proofs of Prophecy*: 24-6 &
131-4; Juwayni *Proofs*, 165; Nasafi TA: vol.
II, 1-3). If, on the one hand, that which a prophet teaches on
the basis of revelation agrees with that which reason can show, there
is no need for prophecy. If, on the other hand, that which a prophet
teaches is inaccessible to reason, then it is not rational, and so to
be rejected. The argument continues that it seems impossible that God
should act in vain, but if he were to send prophets, he would be
acting in vain, since the presence of prophets is either redundant or
their message is in a sense irrational.



Theologians and certain Muslim philosophers both wanted to justify and
to explain prophecy in light of this challenge. Theologians preferred
to show why, despite the above dilemma, prophecy is possible and not
vain: If anything, it is a sign of God's grace. Certain
philosophers aimed to show that in addition to prophecy's being
possible, there is a natural explanation for it grounded in natural
philosophy. While both groups' approaches are significantly
different, they share a common feature. Both recognized that human
cognitive capacities differ and that not all humans are equal with
regard to those capacities. Indeed, most humans need the symbolic and
simplified message of a prophet to reach genuine knowledge of the key
religious, ethical and social elements necessary for a devout
life.



Juwayni followed by his student Ghazali are
representatives of the theologians (Juwayni
*al-Irshad*, 302-7 = Juwayni *Proofs*,
165-7 and Ghazali *Moderation*, 188-95;
also see Griffel 2004). For them, it is reasonable that different
individuals with different intellectual capacities may know one and
the same truth in different ways. One way, however, need not make
another way redundant, let alone impossible. Also, even if on their
own some humans can learn certain specific religious claims, reaching
them frequently is difficult and requires a lengthy and diligent
inquiry, which not all either are willing to do or even capable of
doing. Hence, these theologians conclude, it is appropriate, although
not obligatory, that God makes such truths available through prophets
in order that people who do not have the time nor capacity to pursue
such an inquiry still can learn about God and things divine. In this
respect, prophecy, far from being vain, is a sign of God's grace
and concession to human diversity and weakness.



The philosophers' have multiple strategies when treating
prophecy. For example, Ibn Rushd maintains that while philosophy and
science provide the most complete *theoretical* account of the
world and God's relation to it, prophecy and religion more
generally provide a *practical* knowledge of what is good and
right with respect to one's actions (see Taylor 2018). Ibn Rushd
makes this point when identify which kinds of purported miracles are
genuine signs of a prophet. He likens a prophet to a physician. If two
individuals were both to claim to be physicians, and one says,
"Here is my proof", and then walks on water, whereas the
other heals the sick, it is the latter's proof that is truly
relevant and convincing that he is a physician. Similarly, if two
individuals claim to be prophets, and so bearers of a message about
what God wants of us in order to live well and devoutly, and one gives
as proof some seemingly supernatural act, while the other provides
laws and knowledge that actually allow one to live well and devoutly,
it is the latter who is the genuine prophet (Ibn Rushd
*Expositions*, 104-5). It is noteworthy that like
Farabi, Ibn Rushd distinguishes between philosophers
and those incapable of grasping philosophical proof. As for prophetic
messages, the latter group needs only know that prophecy conveys what
is necessary for living a religious life, while any theoretical
account of prophecy must be withheld from them. The fact is that it is
unclear whether Ibn Rushd has or even thinks that there can be a
theoretical account of prophecy, since in his works exclusively for
philosophers (*mu`awwal*) he is prone to be completely
silent or at most raises unanswered puzzles about prophecy.



A theoretical account of prophecy and the mechanism through which it
purportedly occurs are seen in the works of Farabi and
Ibn Sina (Farabi *Perfect State*: ch.
14 and Avicenna DA: 5.6 = MR07: 204-5; also see Walzer 1957 and
Marmura 1964). Both philosophers would agree with Ibn Rushd that the
primary aspect of prophecy and revelation is grounded in the need for
laws and political institutions. That is because these laws and
political institutions delineate and support actions directed toward
the proper end of humans, namely, happiness or flourishing
(*sa'ada*), which intimately involves a knowledge of
God (Farabi *al-Tanbih* = MR07:
104-20 Avicenna MetaH: 10.2). Unlike Ibn Rushd, they
additionally want to provide a theoretical account of prophecy. This
theoretical account attempts to show that far from being a
supernatural act, as the theologians believe, prophecy is a natural
phenomenon and as such has a naturalistic explanation. This attempt at
a naturalistic explanation of prophecy is grounded in both their
emanationist metaphysics and philosophy of mind (see entry on
 Arabic and Islamic psychology and philosophy of mind).
 The details of their positions are complex, so the following is
simply to provide a general sense of their strategy.



As seen, for Farabi and Ibn Sina, there
emanates from God the order of the good in the form of a cascade of
grades of dependent or possible existents, each of which can itself be
a source of emanation and a principle of a lower grade. Human
cognition is itself part of this overflowing: Human intellects receive
this emanation once they are suitably prepared and to the extent that
they are capable, which in turn perfects the intellects so that they
come to have knowledge of our world and God. Next, as noted earlier,
the philosophers recognize varying degrees among human cognitive
capacities. At the very apex of these varying degrees of capacity is
the intellect and imaginative power of prophets. The prophets'
cognitive powers are wholly and perfectly disposed to receive this
emanation, and to the greatest extent possible for humans they grasp
the divine order of the good as it emanates from God. Moreover, from
their intellects the cascade of emanation continues, now entering into
their imagination such that they sensibly experience as symbols and
images what they perfectly know through receiving this ultimately
divine emanation. It is these symbols and images that the prophets use
to convey God's proverbial plan to those who are otherwise
incapable of acquiring this knowledge. While the above presentation
overly emphasizes the 'metaphysical' aspect of their
theory of prophecy, the fact is that the bulk of the theory is
discussed and developed in natural philosophy, particularly in works
corresponding with Aristotle's *De anima* and discussions
in the novel reworking of the Arabic version of Aristotle's
*Parva Naturalia* (for the Arabic verion of the *Parva
Naturalia* see Hansberger 2010). In a real sense, the aim is to
naturalize prophecy. Thus, prophecy, for these philosophers, is
possible precisely because it is the natural, even necessary, outcome
of certain rare, but wholly natural, psychological processes.


### 4.2 Miracles



The second issue again is distinguishing the true prophet from a
charlatan, trickster or even sorcerer. If it is reasonable that God
appoints prophets, the question that immediately arises is how to
recognize them and to justify their claims to prophethood. In response
to this challenge many thinkers in the Islamicate world, theologians
and philosophers alike, identified performing miracles as a decisive
sign of one's rightful claim to being a prophet ('Abd
al-Jabbar SUK: 568-9; Juwayni *Proofs*,
167-8; Ibn Furak *Mujarrad Maqalat*,
176-80; and Baqillani *al-Tamhid*,
141-60).



The Arabic term for a prophet's miracle is
*mu'jiza*, which means that which shows the
*impotence* of others. Specifically, a miracle is a challenge
by the prophet to others to perform a similar act, which the others
are presumably incapable of doing. In general, then, a miracle is any
extraordinary event that confirms an individual's claims to
prophethood (Juwayni *Proofs*, 168-72). Muslims
recognize two kinds of such extraordinary events. The first is any
event that follows upon the prophet's challenge and that is
highly unexpected albeit not strictly a violation of the natural
order. For example, the occurrence of a plague, which ensues after the
prophet predicts it. Also, the very inimitability of the Qur'an
(*i'jaz*) seems to fall within this category and
often is cited as the only, yet most convincing, proof of
Muhammad's claim to prophethood.



> 
> 
> And if you are in any doubt about what we (God) have sent down to our
> servant, produce a *sura* of the like of [this
> Qur'an]. (Qur'an 2:23; also see 11:13, 10:38, 17:88 and
> 52: 34)
> 
> 
> 



Those who were so challenged apparently were impotent to rise to the
challenge. The second class of extraordinary events requires the
actual suspension of natural laws. Examples include, the virgin birth
and the raising of the dead back to life. (Peterson et al. 2013:
208-9). To distinguish this class from the first, let us call
them 'supernatural' miracles or events, namely, something
that is both extra-ordinary and indeed outside of the natural order of
things.



Although many, if not most, medieval Islamic scholars acknowledged
prophetic miracles, the issue of whether there truly were both kinds
of miracles remained an important topic of discussion. The theologians
championed the position that there are both kinds. The philosophers,
while not denying that extraordinary acts confirm one's
prophethood, maintained that although miracles are exceptionally rare,
they remain part of the natural order, and so they held a position
about miracles much like the naturalized view of prophecy. Let us look
at the philosophers' position and then turn to the
theologians' response to it.



Ibn Sina's position may be highlighted here (Avicenna
DA: 198-200 & ITN2: 105; also see Davidson 1992: 121-2
and Al-Akiti 2004). For Ibn Sina, performing miracles is one
of three properties that identify a prophet. We have already seen the
other two, namely, (1) to divine future and/or absent events and (2)
to relate religious truths in symbolic form that all can grasp. Ibn
Sina explains miracles in much the same way that he explains
these other two properties of the prophet. The intellect and
imagination of prophets are of the highest degree possible for humans,
and so the prophet fully grasps and understands the order of the good
that has its ultimate sources in the divine emanation. Additionally,
Ibn Sina recognizes the well-established fact that
one's mind and emotions can produce psychosomatic responses even
in people of limited intellectual power; however, while for the most
parts these responses are limited to one's own body, in the case
of the prophets their minds can affect other bodies, whether animate
or inanimate. In so doing, they can cause winds to blow, or rains to
fall and even earthquake as well as healing or bringing illness on
others. While for us to day the Avicennan account of miracles might
appear to border on the occult, within the scientific framework in
which he was working, his position provided a legitimate natural
explanation of what otherwise could only be called the miraculous. To
be sure, not all philosophers accepted Ibn Sina's
suggested naturalistic mechanism to explain the apparently miraculous.
Still, few denied miracles outright. Thus, even Ibn Rushd apparently
allowed *that* there are miracles--as seen in the
miraculous practical value of the laws and religious claims embodied
in Qur'an--while remaining virtually silent on *how*
such a miracle as the Qur'an could occur.



Ghazali provides the theologians' response to the
philosophers in his *Incoherence of the Philosophers*
(Ghazali *Incoherence*, disc. 17; also see Fakhry
1958: 56-78; Marmura 1989; Lopez-Farjeat 2016:
131-140). To begin, the Qur'an contains accounts of
miracles, some of which clearly appear to be of the supernatural kind,
e.g., the virgin birth and resurrection from the dead. A literal
reading of these miracle-stories requires violations of essential or
natural causation, that is, regular, non-divine causal series that
purportedly necessitate their effects. Ghazali complains
that on the philosophers' account, the Quranic stories of
supernatural miracles cannot be taken literally.



> 
> 
> Whoever renders the habitual courses [of nature] a necessary constant,
> makes all these [miracles] impossible. [The philosophers] have thus
> interpreted what is said in the Qur'an about the revivification
> of the dead metaphorically. (Ghazali *Incoherence*,
> 163 [23])
> 
> 
> 



While again Ghazali allows for limited metaphorical readings
of the Qur'an, he does so only in those cases where he believes
that the literal sense leads to a genuine absurdity or even
contradiction. For example, Quranic passage that when taken literally
imply that God has a body, for Ghazali, must be read
metaphorically, for to be embodied is to be *limited* and yet
God is *unlimited*. Miracles of the supernatural kind, that is,
violations of natural causation and necessitation, in contrast, do not
involve absurdities or outright contradictions. They are admittedly
rare, but seemingly possible. Moreover, as we have seen, the
theologians view natural causation as nothing more than presumption on
the part of the philosophers, preferring occasionalism instead. Thus,
for Ghazali, absent a proof for the impossibility of
supernatural miracles, one should accept the Qur'anic stories as
literal accounts of real events. Still, Ghazali does not
ultimately believe that these supernatural miracles should be the
only, even the primary, basis for one's belief in the veracity
of the Qur'an and Muhammad's prophethood
(Ghazali *al-Munqidh*, 41-4
[*Deliverance*, 83-7]). As for the true proof for the
inspired nature of the Qur'an, Ghazali, in a way that
foreshadows and even may have influenced Ibn Rushd's views,
points to the effect of a careful study of the Qur'an and the
traditions surrounding Muhammad, the effect of which is the
purification of hearts (*tasfiyat al-qulub*) Both
the miraculous and the practical confirm the divine sovereignty and
governance of all events and testify to the prophetic and miraculous
nature of the Qur'an.


## 5. The Problem of evil



One of the important problems for Abrahamic religions is to explain
the presence of evil given the assumption that an all-wise, all-just,
all-powerful and all-loving God created and is continuously conserving
the world. Modern philosophical discussions of the so-called problem
of evil frequently focus on whether the presence of evil provides
evidence against the existence of such a God, and so against classical
monotheism more generally. In contrast, for medieval Muslim
philosophers and theologians, the existence of God was never in
question. Instead, 'the problem' of evil for these
thinkers is a cluster of related issues, not the least of which is
"What is evil?" and "Is our world the best possible
world?" Additionally, these thinkers wanted to reconcile the
divine attributes with the presence of evil or to determine which of
the divine attributes, particularly between divine justice and
God's omnipotence, trumps the others.



One strategy for explaining the presence of evil was to emphasize
God's transcendence and sovereignty over the universe.
Considering human actions, we judge that some cases of causing others
pain are justified, e.g., in disciplining someone or administering
justice, while others are not, e.g., gratuitous violence. Given the
belief that God created the universe and controls the course of events
in the world, how can we explain the suffering that animals,
especially humans, undergo? In this regard, some argued that the
ethical rules applicable among humans are not applicable to God.
Supporters of this account, predeterminists (*jabriyya*),
emphasize that the relation between God and the universe is one
between property and owner. Just as a person can do what he wants with
his property, so also God has the right to treat his property in
whatever way he wants ('Abd al-Jabbar SUK: 483-5).
Abu al-Hasan 'Ali b. Isma'il
al-Ash'ari (d. 935/6), founder of the Ash'arite
theological school, seems to have defended such a position at an early
stage in his career. He highlights God's absolute control over
the course of events in the world (Ash'ari EIF: 50-1).
Thus, the suffering that affects animals and humans, does not need any
further justification, since the universe is God's property and
God can treat creatures the way he pleases. He can punish an innocent
person and can hold people responsible to do that which they cannot do
(Ash'ari EIF: 111-13).



Instead of emphasizing God's sovereignty over creation, another
approach, which is usually associated with Mu'tazilite
theologians, is to consider if there is any reason that justifies an
instance of suffering independent of whether the cause of that
suffering is God or a human agent (see Hourani 1971 and Vasalou 2008).
If one understands evil as unjustified suffering, then in such cases
of suffering where there is a valid justification--like a certain
derived benefit or as punishment--the suffering cannot be
considered evil, at least not in the sense of unjustified suffering
('Abd al-Jabbar SUK: 485-6). Consequently, in
considering whether some case of suffering is evil, one must take into
account, not only the conditions of the agent, that is, whether God or
a creature caused it, but also whether there are justifying reasons
for the suffering. Since God is good and just, there must be reasons
justifying any instance of suffering that is traced back to the divine
action--excluding human free actions. Mu'tazilite
theologians identified some of these reason as compensation
(*'iwad*), admonition (*'ibr*),
punishment, some kind of benefit (*maslaha*) or
even grace (*lutf*) ('Abd al-Jabbar SUK:
487-9 and Ibn al-Malahimi *al-Fa`iq*,
261-74). Thus, the Mu'tazilite theologians argued that the
existence of suffering in the world is compatible with the goodness,
generosity and justice of God.



The standards by which Mu'tazilite theologians evaluate what is
good and just is the same for both God and humans. Their objective
standard of goodness and justice had further implications about the
presence of evil in our world. One notable implication is that God
must do what is best (*aslah*). Initially certain
Mu'tazilites maintained that God must do what is best only in
religious matters, namely, commands and prohibitions (Ibn Mattawayh
*al-Tadhkira*, II, 332-3, 360). Ultimately, most
Mu'tazilite theologians came to agree that since God is generous
and good, he does what is best in all his actions, whether religious
matters or creating and ordering the universe (Ibn
al-Malahimi *al-Fa`iq*, 119 and 'Abd
al-Jabbar *al-Aslah*: XIV, 53). Consequently,
even if the Mu'tazilite theologians do not emphasize this
implication, for them this world is the best possible world.



The Neoplatonic-inspired philosophers, like Farabi and
Ibn Sina, had yet another strategy to explain the presence
of evil, which Ibn Sina exemplifies well
(Farabi *al-Ta'liqat*, SS39
and Avicenna MetaH: 9.6, 339-47). Ibn Sina takes up
the problem of evil within the context of divine providence (see above
 SS3.2.1).
 The question is how can the existence of evil in the universe be
explained, if the whole universe emanates from an absolutely good God?
Following the Neoplatonist tradition, he associates goodness with
existence or being and evil with non-being or the imperfection of
being proper to a thing. Since evil is in a sense a non-thing, and the
non-existent does not have a cause, it is a category mistake to ask
what is the cause of evil absolutely speaking or to suggest that God
causes. it.



Still, Ibn Sina recognizes that some apparent evils, most
notably suffering, cannot simply be reduced to imperfections and the
privation of a proper existence. There are events, or conditions, that
actively can cause suffering. Ibn Sina argues that evil as
suffering is applicable only to a small part of the whole universe,
and yet is indispensable to that part, a 'necessary evil',
if you will. This part of the universe consists of things that are
subject to generation and corruption. The sphere of generation and
corruption, according to Neoplatonic cosmology, is limited to the
Earth, its inhabitants and the immediate atmosphere enveloping the
Earth. Thus, in order for there to be absolutely no evil in the entire
cosmos the sphere of generation and corruption either would have
needed not to exist or to be deprived of the properties that make
generable and corruptible things what they are. Divine providence
precludes both options, Ibn Sina argues, for roughly the
same reason in both cases, namely, the universe overall would be less
good than it actually is, even given the presence of some evil. An
example drawn from Ibn Sina clarifies his point. Certainly,
a poor man who loses his family and possessions to a fire, suffers an
evil. Yet the fact that fire is essentially hot, so as to cook flesh
and to burn wood, is in itself good. Likewise, that wood and flesh are
essentially such as to be cooked by fire are in themselves good. To
eliminate fire's power to burn and the powers by which wood and
flesh are cooked is to eliminate those very things. Thus, to eliminate
the possibility of this kind of suffering would be to eliminate an
entire class of existents, namely, those subject to generation and
corruption. Consequently, an entire class of objective good in the
universe would be lost, and so make the world overall less good. For
Ibn Sina, such a loss is simply incompatible with his
conception of divine providence, God is ultimately the source of an
order that is the most perfectly possible commensurate with the chain
of all possible existents.



While both Ibn Sina's and the Mu'tazilite
explanations of the presence of evil imply that God has created the
best possible world, neither explicitly make this claim in their
works. It was Ghazali, who explicitly argued that the actual
world is the best of all possible worlds (see Ormsby 1984). "In
the realm of the possible", Ghazali assures us,



> 
> 
> there is nothing at all more wondrously beautiful than [this world]
> nor more complete nor more perfect (*laysa fi-l-imkan
> abda' aslan ahsana minhu wa la atamma wa la
> akmala*)
> 
> 
> 



or as it was popularized in the rhyming couplet,



> 
> 
> In the realm of all the possible, nothing than what is is more
> wonderful. (*laysa fi-l-imkan abda' mimma
> kan*) (Ghazali FDU: 45-6 and
> Ghazali *Forty Principles*, 259)
> 
> 
> 



The imperfection that we see in the world is a result of the limits of
our knowledge. The reason that this must be the best possible world is
because if a better universe were possible and God did not create it,
yet could have created it, he would have been miserly; however, God is
omnibenevolent, and so this claim must be false. If God did not create
this purportedly better possible world because he could not do so,
then God would be impotent in some respect; however, God is
omnipotent, and so this claim must be false. In short, none of these
or similar options for explaining a less than optimal world are
acceptable, for they all impugn God's majesty. To be sure,
Ghazali is not claiming that there is no evil in the world;
rather, for him, evil, as imperfection and suffering, is an essential
ingredient of the perfection of the world. While we might not fully
recognize how certain specific cases of evil contribute to the
world's overall perfection, nonetheless, those very
imperfections can help one appreciate the contrasting good in the
world. Thus the actual universe, with the evil included in it, is the
best possible universe.


## 6. Religious/theological language



Theological language has a special status that presents a challenge
for thinkers particularly within the Abrahamic traditions since God is
considered to be completely different from creation, while our
language applies mainly, if not solely, to creatures. Thus, to express
what and how God is proves a difficult challenge. The follow section
considers earlier Islamic approaches to understanding theological
language and how to read the Qur'an's claims about God.
The next section
 (SS6.2)
 considers how later Muslim philosophers and the various schools of
Muslim theologians developed these approaches with an eye to their
discussions of the divine attributes.


### 6.1 Early approaches to theological language



The earliest developments in Islamic theological language emphasized
God's absolute unity/simplicity (*tawhid*) and
perhaps most importantly, since God is unlike creatures
(*mukhalafa li-l-hawadith*), his transcendence
(*tanzih*). The proponents of divine transcendence, the
eponymous Jahmiyya, named after the movement's founder Jahm ibn
Safwan (696-745), denied that God has any attributes
(see Schock 2016: 55-77). Consequently, critics referred to
these theologians as apophaticists
(*Mu'attila*, literally, 'those who
void') to indicate that this position voids religious texts of
their literal meaning since God transcends anything that we can say or
understand about him. In response to this emphasis on divine
transcendence, there emerged those who stressed a hyper-literal
reading of Qur'anic verses--such as Qur'an 48: 10
& 38, 71; 2: 115 and 11: 37 with their references to God's
hands, face and eyes respectively--and the prophetic traditions.
Based on a literal reading, they made God similar to creatures and
ascribed to him a physical body, and so were labeled anthropomorphists
(*mushabbiha*, literally, 'simulators') and
corporealists (*mujassima*) (see Van Ess 2000). A reaction to
these two earlier positions was that of the traditionalist
(*salafi*) who claimed to follow the example of the
earliest generation (*salaf*) of Muslims, i.e., the companions
of the Prophet and the followers of the companions. They attempted to
provide a middle path between the apophatic and anthropomorphic
understandings of God. They wanted neither to void the Qur'an of
its literal meaning by emphasizing divine transcendence nor to make
God similar to bodily creatures by taking the Qur'an out of its
broader theological context. In general, they maintained that while
one knows *that* God has the various anthropomorphic characters
that the Qur'an attributes to him, one should not delve into
*how* (*kayf*) God has those attributes, i.e., their
mode of existence. All the major approaches developed later in the
medieval Islamic world, such as those of the Mu'tazilites,
Ash'arites, Maturidites and philosophers, can be traced back to
and are modifications of these three approaches (Winter 2008:
33-141; Rudolph 1996 [2015]: 23-121; and Watt 1973:
242-50, 279-318; 1992: 46-55, 64-97).



Underlying the apophatic, anthropomorphic and traditionalist positions
about divine attributes is a common assumption, namely, when one talks
about God and about creation, one must use univocal language. In other
words, it was assumed that if language is to be literal and
informative, properties predicated of God and of creatures must have
exactly the same sense. Thus, if, as the Qur'an purports, God
has hands, eyes and speaks, having hands, eyes and speaking must have
one the same meaning when predicated of God and of creatures. For
Muslim Apophatic theologians, since we cannot take attributes
predicated of God univocally in the way they are predicated of
creation, we must take them as negations about God. Conversely,
granting the assumption of univocal predication, Muslim
anthropomorphists maintained it is legitimate to draw the implications
that God has bodily parts similar to those of creatures from the
Qur'anic statements about God. Muslim Traditionalists, with the
same assumption, affirmed the literal meaning of religious texts that
predicate of God creaturely properties, but they understood them as
governed by the principle that God is unlike creation, and so those
properties that are found in creation and predicated of God may be
acknowledged without additionally drawing their ordinary
implications.


### 6.2 Theological language and the divine attributes



Issues associated with how God or the divine self (*dhat*)
is related to his properties or attributes (*sifat*)
drove further developments among medieval Islamic scholars. One common
classification of the divine attributes was into (1) essential
properties or attributes (*sifat bi-dhat*) and
(2) properties of action (*sifat bi-fi'l*).
Essential properties in turn are divided into negative
(*salbi*) properties and 'properties of
*ma'ni*', that is, properties with a positive
(*thubuti*) meaning, and so add some further sense to
what it is to be God. Negative properties indicate God's
transcendence and include unity, eternity (*qidam*), permanence
(*baqa`*), self-subsistence (*qiyam bi
nafsihi*), dissimilarity to the creation (*mukhalafa
li-l-hawadith*) and one may also include simplicity,
although it is not usually included in the list. This list consists of
'formal properties' in the sense that they do not indicate
any perfection *per se* but an absence of limitations on God,
e.g., non-temporal, immutable and non-dependent (Burrell 1986:
46-50). In general, all of these negative properties express a
dissimilarity to creation, since each one of them indicates how God is
*not* like creation in a certain respect. The positive
properties (properties of *ma'ani*) include
power (*qudra*), will (*irada*), knowledge
(*'ilm*), life (*hayat*), speech
(*kalam*), hearing (*sam'*) and sight
(*basar*). Properties of action include creation and the
conservation of the universe, commanding, determining what happens
(*qadar*) in the universe, etc. Positive properties and
properties of action imply some similarity to creation. One may add as
another sub-category of properties found in the Qur'an those
that necessarily imply similarity with creaturely existence, like
having a face, eyes, being seated, etc. In general later Muslim
theologians and philosophers understood this last set of properties
metaphorically. How to understand the sense and status of the divine
essential properties with a positive meaning, however, remained an
important problem for medieval Muslim scholars. The three most
prominent and developed views were those of the Mu'tazilite
theologians, the Ash'arite and Maturidite theologians and the
philosophers. Let us consider each school in turn.


#### 6.2.1 The Mu'tazilites and theological language



Mu'tazilite theologians strongly emphasized both God's
dissimilarity to creation and his absolute oneness or simplicity. They
ask one to consider the properties or perfections found in humans and
also attributed to God, like, knowledge, power and will. As these
properties exist in humans there is a distinction between the thing
that possesses the perfections and the perfections themselves. Is the
same true of God? The answer for the Mu'tazilites is a resounding
'no!' That is because if the divine attributes are
distinct from the divine self, then there would be a multiplicity of
divine, eternal entities, namely, the eternal and divine subject of
attribution and the eternal and divine attributes. Consequently, they
conclude, divine oneness and unity is lost and indeed one sinks into a
form of polytheism far from the monotheism of Islam, a position that
the Mu'tazilites found wholly untenable. For Mu'tazilites,
the relation between God's self and his attributes must be
either one of negation (*salb*), namely, to deny that God is in
any way limited in the way creatures are, or one of identity, namely,
the divine attributes are not distinct from the divine self that bears
those attributes.



In the case of interpreting divine attributes as negations,
Mu'tazilites modified a version of the earlier Muslim
apophaticists. For instance, to say that "God is knowing",
means that God is not ignorant", or to say that "God is
powerful" means that "God is not weak or not
powerless". The rest of the divine attributes are interpreted
along the same lines (Ash'ari MI: 155-77, 183-5
& 486 and 'Abd al-Jabbar SUK: 182-213). Such
attributions are helpful in understanding and speaking about God in
just they way that eliminating possible choices from a multiple-choice
question is helpful. One with such negative knowledge is certainly in
a better position than one who does not possesses it or is merely
guessing or who wrongly believes that they know what is true.
Moreover, informative, negative ascriptions do not require assigning
to God a plurality of distinct positive properties, which in fact are
more fitting of creatures. Thus, in the case of negative ascriptions,
both God's transcendence and simplicity are safeguarded.



As for identifying God's self and attributes, Mu'tazilites
began by acknowledging that human language cannot avoid distinguishing
a subject and the properties predicated of that subject, and indeed
the Qur'an addresses humans in human language. This feature is a
limit of human language and our cognitive capacities but not of God.
In the case of God, there is an identity of the subject and
perfections predicated of the divine subject, even though human
thinking and speaking cannot avoid distinguishing these as separate
(Ash'ari MI: 155-85 and 'Abd al-Jabbar SUK:
182-213). Unfortunately, identifying the divine properties of
perfection with God Himself is not as simple as it might first appear.
If divine properties are identical to God, then they must be identical
to each other, and yet, for example, despite adages to the contrary,
knowledge seems to be truly distinct from power. Additionally, if God
is identical to his properties, God would be a property, which hardly
seems like an object worthy of worship (Ghazali
*Incoherence*, discs. 5-6; cf. Plantinga 1980:
26-61 and McGinnis 2022).



One Mu'tazilite response to this objection was that of Abu
Hashim al-Jubba`i (d. 933). In order to
explain, both why and how identifying positive properties with God
does not lead to these absurdities, he argued that such properties are
like states (*ahwal*) of an entity--e.g.,
sitting--which can differ depending upon how one considers them.
Thus, if a state is taken on its own, it does not really exist out
there--there is no 'sitting' that exists out there
simply as sitting. Still, the fact that a state as some independent
property does not exist out there does not mean that it is an
absolutely non-existent; rather, it exists by virtue of the existence
of the entity in that state. Thus, to say that "God is
knowing" is to indicate a certain state of God and to say that
"God is powerful" is to indicate another state of God, yet
in neither case, does the state indicate what God himself is
('Abd al-Jabbar SUK: 128-9; also see Schmidtke 2016a:
162-4).


#### 6.2.2 Ash'arites/Maturidites and theological language



Ash'arite and Maturidite theologians accused the Mu'tazilite
theologians of all the problems following upon identifying the divine
self and its attributes implies, such as the loss of distinction among
the divine attributes and that ultimately God would be identical with
a property. In opposition to the Mu'tazilites, the Ash'arite
and Maturidite theologians affirmed the distinction between the
positive divine attributes, like knowledge, power and will, and God as
the bearer of those attributes. Thus, the problem facing them was to
explain how a multiplicity of divine things, and so a violation of
divine oneness, does not ensue if God's self and his distinct
properties of perfection are all divine and eternal.



They adopted two main strategies to address this problem. One early
strategy was to argue that properties predicated of God with some
positive connotation--properties that are not simply
negations--are neither different from nor identical to the divine
self. One challenge to such a view is that it seems to violate the Law
of Excluded Middle, for a divine attribute must either be identical to
the divine self or not identical to it, in which case it would be
different from the divine self. Two early Ash'arite theologians,
Baqillani and Juwayni, apparently tried to adopt
the Mu'tazilite theory of states to address this concern.
Considered in themselves, the divine attributes are not identical to
God, while considered relative to God's possession of those
attributes they are identical to God (Shahrastani
*al-Milal*, I 82 & *Summa*, 52-60; F. D.
Razi *Opinions*, 61-4 and
Taftazani *Creed*, 51-5).



Another way that Ash'arites and Maturidites attempted to observe
divine transcendence while upholding the meaningfulness of theological
language was to emphasize that when an attribute is predicated of God,
"God is not like others that have that attribute". For
example, al-Maturidi, in his *Kitab
al-Tawhid*, begins by criticizing the anthropomorphic
position by indicating certain shortcomings of conceiving God in a
manner similar to creation (Maturidi KT: 43-7;
also see Rudolph 1996 [2015: 282-4]). He then explains how God
is unlike creation. When properties predicated of creation are
predicated of God, they are used in such a way that all the creaturely
implications are stripped off; they are, as it were, a 'winnowed
concept' (cf. Alston 1985). He also acknowledges that in order
to know God, we must use the language that is used to talk about
creatures. Accordingly, we predicate perfections of God, but take into
account the principle that God is unlike creatures. For example, one
may say "God knows but His knowledge is unlike, knowledge
belonging to creatures". This way of predicating attributes of
God also found supporters among Mu'tazilite theologians, like
'Abd al-Jabbar, who offers and defends the same strategy and
formula. The strategy, however, has its challenges, for if one
interprets 'unlike' in the strict sense, theological
language seems to lose its informative function, while if it is not
taken in a strict sense, it is not clear that divine transcendence is
secured.


#### 6.2.3 Philosophers and theological language



To varying degrees most, if not all, philosophers accepted some form
of a negative theology when discussing the divine attributes
(Kindi PWK: "On First Philosophy", SSSS
XIX-XX; Farabi *Perfect State*, ch. 1; and
Avicenna MetaH: 8.4). For them, many, if not all, of the attributes
ascribed to God are in fact merely descriptions of ways that God is
unlimited or infinite in some respect or other. The
philosophers' general strategy is the same as the
Mu'tazilites (see
 SS6.2.1),
 where the basic idea, again, is that negative ascriptions, while
informative, do not involve God's necessarily possessing a
plurality of positive attributes, which would jeopardize both divine
simplicity and God's transcendence.



Certain philosophers, like Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, likewise
repeated the Mu'tazilite position that the divine self is
identical with its essential attributes, like life, knowledge and
power (Avicenna *al-Najat*, 264 = MR07: 214 & MetaH:
1.7 & 8.4 and Ibn Rushd *Tahafut*, 299-301 [1954:
177-9]). Ibn Rushd notes that in a limited sense this
identification of some entity with its essential attributes is true
even of creatures. He provides the example of the definition of
'man' as a 'rational animal'. Both rationality
and animality are parts of the definition of 'man', but
they are not distinct parts constituting the flesh-and-blood man in
the world in the way that color and shape are. This analogy is not to
suggest that one can have a definition of God, which Ibn Rushd flatly
denies, but only to indicate that the way humans conceive an entity
needs not perfectly reflect how that entity exists in the world.
Indeed, Ibn Rushd goes further and provides a principled Aristotelian
reason why no creature could ever form a definition of God or fully
grasp the divinity (Ibn Rushd *Tahafut*, 345-6 [1954:
207]). He notes that according to Aristotelian principles to grasp
what a thing is essentially, so as to be able to have a definition,
requires that in some sense the intellect becomes the very thing
grasped. Thus, since a finite human intellect can never grasp the
infinite--indeed, to whatever extent it does grasp it, the very
act of grasping it limits it so that it is finite in the human
intellect--it can never form a definition of God nor fully grasp
God's essential existence. Thus, by necessity the human
intellect conceives a plurality of attributes in its conception of God
where in fact none exists. Admittedly, this discussion comes from one
of Ibn Rushd's popular works and not from one intended solely
for the philosophers, and so whether it presents his considered view
on the subject remains unclear. As for Ibn Sina, he is more
forthcoming, arguing that all the various (positive) essential
attributes said of God really are nothing more than alternative
descriptions of a single reality, namely, necessary existence through
itself (*wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi*), which is
identical with and unique to God.


## 7. Ethics in Islam



In addition to the role of reason in justifying specific ethical
judgments like what is morally right and wrong (*al-husn
wa-l-qubh*)--a discussion that mirrors those about
reason and faith in Islam more generally
 (SS1.2)--Muslim
 thinkers also were concerned with the ontological status of normative
properties, like goodness and badness (see Emon 2010). With respect to
this issue, one asks whether ethical facts exist independently of God
or do they originate from and have their morally binding force as a
result of a divine command. On the one hand, if the demands of morally
good and bad actions are independent of God, then is God subject to
those demands or not? If so, then does God observe them as a matter of
necessity, in which case God's power seems limited, or does he
observe them as a matter of will or choice, in which case were he not
to observe them would he be morally bad, since again these demands
determine morally good and bad actions? On the other hand, if ethical
dicta have their source and force in God's commanding them,
could God have commanded contrary to what he did and so invert right
and wrong? For example, could God have commanded us to lie, in which
case lying would have been obligatory and even morally good?


### 7.1 The Mu'tazilites on the morally right and wrong (*al-husn wa-l-qubh*)



Mu'tazilite theologians defended the view that reason can acquire
a knowledge of what is morally right and wrong, precisely because
standards of right and wrong are purportedly objective and not
arbitrary, and so are independent of God's merely commanding
them. Their views are laid out within the context of moral
responsibility (see Hourani 1971 & 1985 and Vasalou 2008). For
Mu'tazilite theologians, while perhaps reason cannot discover all
of those actions for which one is religiously responsible in order to
be a devout Muslim (such as praying five times daily or avoiding
pork), one could come to know the more general ethical human
responsibilities (such as avoiding lying and honoring one's
benefactor). This is because according to the Mu'tazilites, the
properties that make an action good or bad, and for which one is
morally responsible, are objective qualities relative to the action,
to the consequence(s) of the action or to the agent of the action.
These moral properties are objective precisely because we
observe--whether through self-reflection or inference from the
outward behavior of others--the benefit or the harm that an
action causes. Thus, in a consequentialist vein, these
Mu'tazilites relate the morally good with what is genuinely
beneficial and the morally bad with what is harmful. Religion then
confirms what reason knows about the moral status of an action and its
consequence(s).



Since for these thinkers the ethical status of an action does not
depend on a divine command, the question arises whether God is bound
to behave ethically. 'Abd al-Jabbar argued that ethical
demands are binding and applicable not only to human agents but also
to God and his action as well ('Abd al-Jabbar
*al-Ta'dil*: 52-70). Thus, he argues that if
one denies that God is bound to do and to command the morally good,
the commands and prohibitions given in scripture would be not only
arbitrary but possibly even mutable and unreliable. For example, if
one allowed that God could lie, then God or the prophets could be
lying about what is required for salvation or what leads to damnation,
in which case all the religious teaching would be under suspicion, a
position which that 'Abd al-Jabbar simply found
unacceptable.


### 7.2 Responses to the Mu'tazilites



Most medieval Muslim thinkers, whether philosophers, theologians or
Sufis, recognized some need for religion in order to possess a
complete understanding of things ethical. Although they generally
granted that humans have some intuitive recognition of virtues and
what is morally good and bad, they emphasized that various human
conditions limit our ability always to judge correctly about the
ethical status of particular actions. One such limit is our inherent
cognitive limits. Thus, the Sufi master Ibn 'Arabi complains
that because the moral goodness or badness of actions may depend on
certain conditions that human reason cannot comprehended, divine
revelation is needed to inform us of the ethical status of our actions
(Ibn al-'Arabi *al-Futuhat
al-Makkiyya* (b), I 459-60 & VII 326). For instance,
what we 'observe' or judge to be a benefit may, all things
considered, actually be harmful and similarly for our judgments about
what is harmful. Only from a 'God's eye perspective'
can one be assured that in fact all things have been considered. In
addition to our inherent cognitive limits, personal and social
conditions affect the reliability of our ethical judgments. For
example, the Sunni jurist, Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. ca.
869), noted that while reason has some share in making sound moral
judgments, selfishness and the human desire for material benefits and
pleasures hinders our ability always to reason correctly and
objectively about what is ethically right and wrong (Tirmidhi
*Kitab Ithbat al-'ilal*, 67-78).
Farabi and Ibn Sina identify yet another
human condition that requires religion to aid reason in determining
right ethical rules. They maintained that ethical and political
judgments are not *a priori* necessary truths, but well-known
and commonly accepted specific rules
(*tafsilat*) acquired from attending to various
practices over long periods of time. Thus, without knowing this
socio-cultural history that religion preserves, one cannot know what
is efficacious for living a good and virtuous life here on earth
(Farabi *Perfect State*, 77-8 and Avicenna
MetaH: 10.2-4; also see Erlwein 2019).



Ash'arite and Maturidite theologians in general vehemently
criticized the Mu'tazilite position that reason alone can
discover even general ethical demands incumbent upon humans and God
alike. Their criticisms highlight the unacceptable theological
implications of the Mu'tazilite position and the inherent limits
of human reason. The most common criticism comes from the theological
implication that God is compelled or obligated to do the good. Recall
that the general Mu'tazilite position, as 'Abd
al-Jabbar articulated it, holds that good and bad are inherent
properties of actions regardless of their agents, and so since God is
good, God is morally compelled to do good. One obvious implication of
this view is that if God cannot do bad actions, then God's power
is limited, and so God is not wholly omnipotent. From a theological
point of view, Ash'arite theologians found this implication
unacceptable. Consequently, they denied that good and bad are inherent
properties of actions and instead demanded that all ethical standards
are dependent on what God himself commands.



As for criticisms against the Mu'tazilite position from the
nature of human reason, Ash'arite and Maturidites theologians
availed themselves of all the argument we have already seen about the
limits of our cognitive capacities and the constraints of our human
condition. Thus, for example, Maturidi presses the
point that while humans may have some inkling of general ethical
principles and what is morally good and bad, these judgments are
always shaky given the frailty of our cognitive capacities.
Consequently, religion is always needed to set our moral judgments on
firm ground (Maturidi KT: 346-51).



Ash'arite and Maturidite scholars also added further arguments to
the arsenal of criticisms against the Mu'tazilite ethical theory.
For instance, in *The Guide to Conclusive Proofs*, Juwayni
puts forth an account of the good and bad, which in certain ways
anticipates the moral theory of David Hume seven hundred years later
(Juwayni *Proofs*, 141-6). The Mu'tazilite
position rests on two key elements: (1) that some actions are either
inherently and rationally good or bad and (2) the implicit assumption
that a rational agent must act in a rational way. Juwayni simply
denies that moral actions are inherently rational and that
consequently there is anything irrational when one does a good or bad
action. To be sure, actions can be obligatory and praiseworthy or
prohibited and blameworthy, but not rational. Instead, continues
Juwayni, when through self-reflection or inference one recognizes
that certain actions are seemingly beneficial and others harmful, one
merely instinctually recognizes that those actions produce pleasure or
pain. It is the human's (and all animals') natural
instinct to seek pleasure and to avoid pain that motivates the action,
not some inherent rational property of the object that reason
grasps.



Ghazali likewise rejected the Mu'tazilites'
position, which he claimed rested upon an ambiguity in the meanings of
the terms 'good', 'bad' and
'obligatory' (*wajib*). For Ghazali,
when one says an action is 'good' or 'bad',
those value judgments must be understood in terms of the intention or
purpose relative to the agent or the one affected by the action. So
understood, an action is good if it achieves the intended purpose and
bad if it does not. While reason can direct and set one's
intentions, so can imagination and estimation (*wahm*) as well
as our passions and appetites. These latter faculty, however,
frequently fail to get at what is ultimately beneficial and harmful
for us, and so they fail to get at what an agent would intend all
things considered. Divine law provides precisely the
'all-things-considered' view.



As for human reason's determining what is morally incumbent upon
God, Ghazali continues that since good and bad are related
to the intentions of the agent, it is impossible for reason alone to
determine whether God's actions are good or bad since we simply
do not know God's intentions independent of revelation. Fakhr
al-Din al-Razi developed a similar defense (F. D.
Razi *al-Matalib*, 289-304; also see
Shihadeh 2006 and 2021). Now instead of understanding good and bad
relative to an agent's intentions, Razi explains them in
consequentialist terms: Actions are good when, relative to the agent
or one affected by the action, they are beneficial or pleasurable and
bad when they are harmful or painful. Since God is in no need of
benefit and in no way can be pained, there is a sense in which his
actions are simply beyond good and evil.



In light of their denial that there is any objective, God-independent
standard of right and wrong to which God is beholden, Ash'arites
were accused of undermining God's justice and making the
goodness or badness of actions arbitrary. That is because if there
were no limits to what God can morally command, then what God willed
in the past to be good or bad, he could in the future will and so
command to be contrariwise. Indeed, God may inflict pain on an
innocent for no reason whatsoever, and yet that action would be good
precisely because God commanded it. The Ash'arites were not
insensitive to this complaint. While both al-Juwayni and
Ghazali insist on God's absolute omnipotence and so
God's possibility to act arbitrarily, they also note that an
action is only actually arbitrary if it is actually carried out, not
if its occurrence is merely possible. Thus, a preferred Ash'arite
response to the arbitrariness complaint was that the possibility of
the occurrence is not the occurrence of the possibility; God confirms
via revelation that he gives reward for good actions and he may punish
only those who do not fulfill what is decreed by revelation
(Juwayni *Proofs*, 157-64, 209-11 and
Ghazali *Moderation*, 172-88).