Topic: History
of Muslim explorations of God’s nature &
Christian intersections
In this document (basically an appendix to the
article on the Trinity: “Are there 3 Gods in One God, in the
Trinity?”—howtrin.html), I want to
show that the Muslim theologians and philosophers had the
same/similar problems with their doctrine of tawhid (e.g.,
relationship between God’s essence and attributes) as the
Christians had with the Trinity (e.g., God’s essence and
internal hypostatic agents), and to overview the various
solutions the Muslim scholarly tradition explored/came up with
(and perhaps, why).
The form of this will basically be an outline –
generally chronological – of the developments.
Opening
comment
on metaphysical explorations of this type
Only God can tell us what He is ‘like’ on the
‘inside’. Muslims and Christians both assert that some things
about God can be known from nature & history. This is
explicitly stated in both the Bible and the Quran.
We know He is ‘more than us’ in every aspect of
existence, and this would include both His unity and His
robustness. As a human, I am an integrated unity (a unity of
body, soul, spirit) but God is more
integrated
than I—He is a unit of no ‘parts’. I am also a bundle of
various attributes, capabilities, aspects, perspectives,
elements (a plurality of internal states) but God is more
robust
than that--He has many more attributes, perspectives, internal
states than do I. I am a simple being--but God is 'more
simple'. I am a complex being--but God is 'more complex'.
He is beyond comparison with humans, so we should
not think of Him as bound to our limitations of number, logic,
or psychology [with some possible exceptions, to be considered
later]. As humans, we cannot be “three full persons sharing
one body” or “three full persons inside of each other”, but
God could
be, in His greatness, robustness, and otherness.
We are dependent on His revelation about such
matters, and human reasoning (although created by God, and
used by God) may easily err in trying to analyze the very
being of God!
I am not terribly far away from the position
described in an old Hanbalite creed (smile):
“They
[true Muslims] are not upholders of analogical reasoning and
reasoned opinion, for analogical reasoning in religion is
worthless, and reasoned opinion is the same and worse.”
[WR:ICAS, p39; Hanabalite creed, article 16]
I personally am convinced that we do know really
know what creaturely ‘existence’ and ‘essence’ and
‘attributes’ ARE, enough to reason confidently from them to
the existence, essence, and attributes of a transcendent God
(see my doubts in The Linguistic Wall, phil0615.html). More technical
terms such as hypostases, subsistence, and ‘modes’ inspire
even greater epistemic unease in me. But within the spheres of
discourse about this subject, I will be using the terms as
others seemed to have used them—and they seemed to believe
that they knew what those terms denoted, with a surprisingly
(to me) high level of precision. [I have no quarrel with the
precision of the various symbolic calculi and logics, of
course, but only with the precision of the terms which we
populate those symbols with—something along the lines of the
fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Container metaphors (X is
inside Y), for example, cast quite a veil over statements like
“His attributes inhere in His essence” for me.]
Definition
of
tawhid
Modern definitions/descriptions and some of the
creedal statements of tawhid
are generally metaphysical statements about the ‘insides’ of
God, and the current emphasis on tawhid
as the decisive attribute of Islam is a recent
phenomenon, and not reflective of earliest Islam.
“TAWHID.
An Arabic term meaning literally "making one" or "unifying,"
is considered by many twentieth-century Islamic activists to
be the axial or defining doctrine of Islam. Although
tawhid has traditionally been recognized as a fundamental
doctrine of Islam, its popularity as Islam's defining
characteristic is a modern development.
Indeed,
the term is not mentioned in the Qur'an. Early
theologians used it in their interpretations of the
relationship between divine essence and divine attributes, as
well as in their defense of divine unity against dualists and
Trinitarians… [WR:OEMIW, s.v. “Tawhid”, 4:190ff]
The understandings of tawhid has been many and
wide in the history of Muslim thought:
TAWHlD
(a.), infinitive II of
w-h-d, means
literally "making one" or "asserting oneness" (Lane, p.
2927"). In consequence, it is applied theologically to the
oneness (wahdaniya,
tawahhud) of Allah in all its meanings. The
word does not occur in the Kur'an, which has no verbal form
from this root nor from the kindred *-h-d, but in the Lisan (iv. 464, „ to
465, , from below) there is an elaborate philological
statement of the usages of the different forms from these
roots as applied to Allah and to men. Technically "the science
of tawhid and
of the Qualities" (‘lm
al-tawhid wa 'l-sifat) is a synonym for "the
science of kalam'' and
is the basis of all the articles of the belief of Islam. In
this definition the Mu'tazilites would exclude the
qualities and make the basis tawhid alone. But
unity is far from being a simple idea; it may
be internal or external; it may mean that there is no other
god except Allah, who has no partner (sharik); it may
mean that Allah is a Oneness in himself; it may mean that he
is the only being with real or absolute existence (al-hakk), all other
beings having merely a contingent existence; it may even be
developed into a pantheistic assertion that Allah is All.
Again, knowledge of this unity may be reached by the methods
of systematic theology (‘lm)
or by religious experience (ma’rifa, mushahada);
and the latter, again, may be pure contemplation or
philosophical speculation.
In consequence, tawhid may
mean simply ‘There is no God but Allah’, or it may cover a
pantheistic position.” [WR:SEI, s.v. “Tahwid”, 586f]
Earliest
expressions
in the history of Muslim theology
The Quran does not discuss the actual ‘insides’
of God. It describes God’s actions
(past, present, and future), God’s will
or law for His creatures (for example, to
believe in His Scriptures and to do good to the poor), God’s character
(for examples, Merciful and Just), and God’s attributes
(for examples, All-knowing, all-powerful, and eternal).
The earliest Muslims had no problem talking about
the multiple perfections within the one God. They simply
accepted what their Scripture said, and those sayings were not
twisted into meaning something other than what they appeared
to say. When the Islamic scriptures said that God was One,
they were understood to mean that there was only one God—only
one being that could correctly be called God. It meant that
there were not two gods, or three gods, or ten gods, or
hundreds of gods. It meant that God had no partner gods, wife
goddesses, or offspring gods -- sons or daughters. There were
no other gods in existence to even be partners, wives, or
children gods.
To say that God was One was to say that God was
alone, that God was different from everything else, and that
God had no equals or rivals.
For the first generation of Muslims, it did not
mean that God had nothing inside His being. It did not mean
that God did not have some kind of multiplicity or diversity
or differentiations within His infinite being. They accepted –
on the basis of their understanding of their scripture—that
God had both knowledge and power within His being, that God
had both mercy and justice within His character, and that God
was both Creator and Sustainer of an external creation. But
they did not think that these everyday expressions in prayers
or praise somehow made them into polytheists! They used these
expressions because God had used those expressions in the
former scriptures (the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament) and
they read these in their Quran, in describing His actions in
history, His attitudes toward us, and His wonderful character.
“This doctrine of the divine unity, of the
inalienable quality of God's divinity, was a tremendous
passion in Muhammad's heart. By virtue of remoteness beyond
all intermediaries, God was half unreal to the pagans. To
Muhammad Allah was
the only real God, whom the Meccans might acknowledge and yet
ignore, saving their intimate worship for familiar
substitutes. Did not God say (Surah 50.16): "We know what
man's soul whispers and are nearer than his neck artery"? The
messenger was dominated by the divine reality and spoke of God
and for God in the burning language of conviction. … The
strictly theological problems were all postponed, to be taken
up in the centuries after Islam's expansion by thinkers other
than Arab with more inquiring minds and less intensity of
purpose. Indeed "postponed" is perhaps an inexact term.
The problems were not consciously deferred. They were not
even felt. They had no place to develop in a mind that was
fully possessed with its single mission. There is no valid
understanding of Muslim theology that does not first strive to
enter into this vivid awareness where it had its genesis.”
[WR:Cragg, 33]
A
Selective Timeline of Muslim Theology until Modern times
For purposes of our discussion, we should note
the rough sequence and time lines of theological development
in Islam (and some of the figures we will refer to in this
discussion). [The time periods/descriptions here come from
Nagel’s The
History of Islamic Theology, (WR:HIT, 285ff).]
Beginnings:
40-130 / 660-750ad. Umayyad dynasty.
This period reveals the beginning of theological
thought, as the crises of understanding the varying
geo-political events challenged mainstream Islam. The
dominant issue of the day was of sovereignty of Allah
(mediated through His rulers) versus freedom of the human
will. These were specifically connected with the political
realm, in the very practical question of whether one should
submit to an ‘evil’ or ‘non-authenticated’ ruler.
“It
was the tension between free will and determinism that gave
rise to the first properly theological dispute in Islam”
[WR:CCCIT:38]
The first major name that shows up in our period is
that of the Qadarites, who held to the freedom of the will:
“The
earliest document of the movement is the Risala of
Hasan al-Basri; it was certainly composed between 75/694...
and 80/699.... From it the moderate wing of the Qadariyya
drew its argument: God creates only good; evil stems from men
or from Satan. Man chooses freely between the two; but God
knows from all eternity what man will choose. He only “leads
him into error” if man has first given him occasion for this
through his sin. Hasan viewed this thesis, which he supports
with subtle Quranic exegesis, as “orthodox” (p. 68, 9 ff.). In
fact this was certainly no “innovation”, but it was only now
systematically formulated for the first time. [EI, s.v.
"Kadariyya"]
Nagel points out that this issue came to the
forefront, because of the ‘non-prophetic’ status of the
Umayyad caliphs:
“The
idea that the obedience demanded of Muslims was based on God's
express wish, which is often emphasized in the Medinese suras,
was certainly fascinating to the Umayyads and their eulogists,
for it gave more clout to the Quraysh's claim to power, which
they had expressed even in pre-Islamic times. The "successor
to God's messenger" became "God's deputy," the executor of the
supreme will, to which the "herd" had to succumb without
protest.
“The
Umayyad caliphs, however, were not prophets,
nor did they ever claim to be. It
was this lack of authority that led up to the question of
the content of their sovereign commands, which
was difficult to answer: Why was it that God wanted exactly
this and nothing else? There was still no Islamic law, not
even in rough outlines. Under
such circumstances, could obedience to the rulers really
guarantee their subjects' salvation? Did the caliphs
convey the "guidelines to righteousness" that were so
fervently sought? The charge leveled at the
Umayyads time and again by a broad movement of discontent, that
they were nothing but "kings," proves that that
question had to be answered in the negative if one compared
the situation with the ideal image that was painted of the
Prophet's original community. Indeed,
being
a prophet and being an Umayyad caliph were two entirely
different matters. Muhammad had always held
that ruling the believers was by no means his ultimate goal;
he was the conveyor of a message, a warner who did not even
have the power to enforce the commands God had revealed to
him: "Say:
'He is able to send forth upon you chastisement, from
above you or from under your feet, or to confuse you in
sects and to make you taste the violence of one another.'
Behold how We turn about the signs; happily they will
understand. Thy people have cried it lies; yet it is the
truth. Say: I am not a guardian over you. Every tiding has
its time appointed; you will surely know.'"
That is how the late Meccan sura 6 puts it (verses 65-67).
“In
Mecca the political and social situation had forced Muhammad
to show such restraint; yet the same concept determined his
self-image in Medina as well. If he demanded obedience from
the believers, he always did so in the name of God, and even
as a prophet he was subject to the law the Supreme One had him
proclaim, just like all other members of the community were. In
that sense, Muhammad was always on the same level with all
the other believers. Quite differently, however, the
Umayyad ruler as "God's deputy"! He acted on
God's behalf and—to use the phrase in sura 6, verse 67—was
certainly the guardian of all his subjects, the "herd."
“In
the young community of followers of the new belief, a
community that was barely held together by clearly defined
tenets or a binding tradition, this momentous shifting of
weights was felt very keenly. For lack of clear concepts, the
community members argued heatedly about the caliphs' tyranny
and injustice (zulm),
all
the more so since, under 'Abd al-Malik (r. 685-705),
profitable expeditions were hardly possible any longer, and he
established a strict order at home, where there was so much
destruction after extended civil wars. That
is the historical background for the earliest specifically
theological documents Islam has produced. These
sources center around the Arabic term qadar,
which in the Koran refers to the measurement of something, a
measurement determined by God; as a verb, the root qadar
expresses God's determining measures that irrevocably
influence human fate: as far back as when He created the
world, He determined once and for all the food supply for each
individual (sura 41, verse 9); he also determined the stations
of the moon (sura 36, verse 39). Thus the verb qadara
refers to God's independently disposing of what He has
created, about which man can do nothing; in relation to God
the idols worshiped by the Meccans—which were created, just
like those worshiping them were—were pathetic slaves who could
not determine anything of their own volition." In other words,
the concept of divine qadar
occupies that area of meaning where God's ever-active care
merges with the predetermination of the individual's fate.
“Where
do we find that gray area in real life? This was the question
which stirred up fierce arguments at the time; there were some
scattered audacious men who did not want that area to begin
until far beyond all human activities and endeavors, men who
tried to maintain that the individual was endowed with a large
degree of self-determination. They granted human beings
virtually their own, independent qadar,
and we find them in the history of Islamic dogma under the
name of "Qadarites."
“Obviously,
"God's deputy" could not be pleased with views of this sort.
To be sure, the Qadarites did not assail the Umayyad ideology
of power directly, but people who are convinced they have
their own qadar
are bad sheep in a herd that is supposed to wait passively for
the orders of "God's deputy”. [WR:HIT, 36-38]
But we also see specific reflection on the nature of
God and His attributes, and the issue of how to understand
anthropomorphic references in the Qur’an. Some of the
positions espoused very literal interpretations of the
Quranic text, while others—at the peril of their
proponents—taught a strong transcendentalism, not unlike
positions later taken by Muslim philosophers (e.g. that God
was unknowable, could not be related to creation, was not a
thing/shay…).
It is during this time that the ‘problem’ of the
anthropomorphic passages becomes acute.
The Medinans show a simplistic approach, which
anticipates many later pronouncements:
“Led
mostly by descendants of the Companions, some of whom were
descended from Abu Bakr and 'Umar I, the Medinans kept alive
the memory of those men as exemplary rulers, against the
opinions of the ShI'a and others. They
also perpetuated a simple and literal-minded understanding
of the verses describing God in the Qur'an.
Thus, in interpreting Qur'an 20:5: "The All-Compassionate is
established on the throne," Malik ibn Anas (d. 795), the
eventual systematiser of Medinan legal thought, is said to
have commented: "This establishment is known- but its mode is
unknown- belief in it is a duty-but inquiring about it is a
[reproved] innovation." Too much metaphysics, for Malik, was
clearly a bad thing. As is indicated by the many deterministic
traditions that came to be circulated, even in the earliest
major work of such traditions, the Muwatta'
of Malik, the Medinans also tended to uphold the
predestinarian view that was being endorsed by the Umayyad
caliphs.” [WR:CCCIT:42]
Islamic theology was widely divided on God’s nature
during this period (and the one after it), and some of the
early statements about God’s nature sound almost bizarre.
Some of the early sources mentioned are called the
‘likeners’, since they ‘liken’ God to humanity.
“Muslim
theologians faced the problem of anthropomorphism on account
of the equivocal teaching of the Qur'an and on account of
philosophical considerations. The
Qur'an states, on the one hand, that there is nothing that
equals God, and that He has no like (Qur'an 42.11, 112.4),
but on the other hand, it describes Him as having a face,
hands and eyes and as talking, and sitting on the Throne
and as having feelings (Qur'an 55.17, 38.75,
54.14, 2.153, 20.5, 2.26). Traditions
also
support the claim that God is a body.
Those who are supposed to have advocated anthropomorphism
(likening God to man- tashbih)
brought
forward rational arguments in addition to their literal
interpretation of the sacred texts. On the
assumption that only
bodies have existence, they argued that since God exists,
He is a body. Also whoever
acts must be a body, according to reality and reason.
Since God acts, He must be a body. The counter
arguments were that since any body is composed of parts,
whereas God is one, and since any body is produced in time
whereas God is eternal, it is inconceivable to liken God to a
body. … The question of the identification of the likeners
(mushabbihun)
is difficult, for no Muslim theologian declared openly that he
was a mushabbih.
The same is true concerning the opposite view. Thus, the
following reports must be cautiously examined. According to
al-Shahrastani, those who adhered to tashbih
were a group of extreme Shi'ites (jama'a
min al-shia al-ghaliya) and a group of gross
traditionists (jama'a
min ashab al-hadith al-hashwiyya). Al-Ash'ari,
however, seems to be right in stating that the early Rafidites
adhered to tashbih,
whereas the later ones rejected it. But there were also
exceptions, such as Hisham ibn al-Hakam, a proto-Shi'ite
theologian and a contemporary of the Imams Ja’far al-Sadiq (d.
765) and Musa al-Kazim (d. between 797 and 804), who appear in
the sources either as a mushabbih
or as rejecting tashbih.
There were individuals whom some sources called mushabbihun
without reservations, but their writings show them in a
different light; such a one is Muqatil
ibn Sulayman (d. 767), a Qur'an exegete, who is
reported as saying that God is a body, flesh and
blood. The case of Muqatil needs
further examination, because it demonstrates the unreliability
of the sources where we learn about his views. His exegesis of
the Qur'an which is now available presents him in a different
way.” [WR:AIQ, 1f]
“The
Kuran mentions God’s face (wadjh),
His eyes (though never in the dual, only in the plural and in
the singular), His hands, in a certain way His side ( sura
XXXIX, 56), and possibly His leg ( LXVIII, 42). But all the
passages involved had a primarily metaphorical meaning; in the
two last cases, the connection with God had even intentionally
to be established first. Some of them were further
elaborated in Hadith. Sura XXXVIII,
75 which implied God’s having created Adam “with His own
hands” was filled out by saying that He
kneaded Adam’s clay for forty days; XXXIX, 67,
“the earth altogether shall be His handful on the Day of
Resurrection”, was made more concrete by asking which
part of it will be on each finger; when, in
VII, 143, God was supposed to have made Mount Sinai “crumble
to dust”, people thought that He achieved that by merely
putting out the tip of His little finger. In
this way, even
a new limb was added; since, according to L,
30, Hell is going to ask “Are there any more (sinners) to
come?”, one could imagine God putting his foot (kadam)
into the fire in order to quench its heat. The most important
addition, however, was the statement of Gen. i. 27, according to which God created Adam
in His image (‘ala suratihi); this was not
found in the Kuran and became now, via hadith, the basis
of theological speculation. The word sura
(for Hebrew demut,
which simply meant “likeness”) referred to sura VII (sawwarnakum
“We shaped you”), and LXIV, 3 (ahsana
suwarakum “He shaped you well”); the question
then was how man’s beautiful shape
reflected God’s own appearance. … The
question had two sides. One could speculate about the
similarity in man; then one could say, e.g., that Adam, as
long as he was in Paradise, had been a lot taller than later
human beings since God is immensely big. But
normally, one concentrated on the similarity in God: He
looks like the blessed in Paradise, young and with curly
hair, perhaps 32 years old (like Jesus!), perhaps only
about 15, like a youth who has not yet grown his beard.
His size is seven spans, as said Mukatil b. Sulayman and
afterward Hisham b. al-Hakam, ideal spans which were not
necessarily identical with human ones. In order to link these popular conceptions with
the Kuran, the theologians discovered the enigmatic
attribute samad
in CXII, 2. They understood it as “solid,
massive”
and saw in it the description of a bodily constitution
which guarantees unity (the topic of the entire
sura). God
is not hollow or porous, as said Mukatil b. Sulayman;
only man is hollow, and he is porous because he consists of
clay. Man has a cavity ( djawf
), namely, his chest and his belly; God does not. God
therefore does not need food; He has neither digestion nor
sexuality. He “does not beget nor has He been begotten” (
CXII, 3). But He speaks and He thinks, for He is wise. This is why Dawud al-Djawaribi pretended, in
contrast to Mukatil, that God can only be massive in His
lower part. He has to be hollow from His waist upward,
since His speech, i.e. revelation, comes forth from His
mouth and His wisdom, namely, the Kuran, from His heart,
i.e. from His chest. Shi’i theology
tried to attenuate this approach by conceiving God as a
luminous being which has a different and much more subtle
matter than man. Hisham al-Djawaliki, though still thinking of
God
as having a “form”, imagined Him to consist of white light
which only changed into black when His profuse hair had to
be described. Hisham b. al-Hakam then gave up
the sura
concept altogether and merely ascribed to God an ideal
geometrical shape which he called a “body” (djism
) in the philosophical sense of the word (like soma
in Stoicism). ” [EI, s.v. “tashbih”]
But in the more mainstream of Islamic theology would
be the writings of Muqatil b. Sulayman during this period.
Muqatil was a traditionalist and his tafsir
(commentary) is the earliest extant one we have.
“Muqatil
b. Sulayman al-Balkhl (d. 150/767). A mawla of the
Asad, a traditionist and an exegete, Abu l-Hasan Muqatil b.
Sulayman b. Bashir al-Azdl al-Khurasani al-Balkhi (d. 150/767)
was born in Balkh (in modern-day Afghanistan) and lived in
Marw and Iraq. His scholarly activities took him as far afield
as Beirut and Mecca. Muqatil's case is very special within the
field of Quranic tafsir,
as his tafsir
of the Qur'an is most likely the earliest extant commentary.
Given the general sensitivity surrounding the issue of early
Islamic texts, scholars tend to be sceptical about the
authenticity of early commentaries on the Qur'an, but they are
less so with Muqatil's tafsir. The case for its authenticity
is based on the consistently uniform nature of the author's
approach in his commentary, and the conformity of these
characteristics to what we know about Muqatil as an exegete
and theologian from later sources that make reference to him.
First, he makes fairly abundant use of Biblical narratives (isra’iliyyat)
for his comments on any Qur'anic reference to pre-Islamic
Judaeo-Christian figures or events. Second,
he does not hesitate to interpret anthropomorphic verses
about God literally, so that for him God has a hand, an
eye and sits on a throne, etc.…The exegetical
corpus ascribed to him is rarely, if at all, acknowledged in
the works of later Sunni traditionists (ashab
al-hadith); often exegetical reports are
reproduced without
explicit mention of his name as transmitter or
narrator. It seems likely that this was on account of his
disregard for isnads,
his perceived exaggerated dependence on the Biblical isra’liyyat
material, and
his proclivity to interpret Qur'anic anthropomorphic
verses in a quite literal manner.
Despite these 'blemishes', and even though he is not
explicitly cited by later commentators such as Tabari, it is
clear that his work was always a source for Qur'anic
exegetical material.”[WR:AAQC1, 21f]
“Muqatil's
interpretation of the word "eye" (‘ayn)
is twofold; in one place (Qur'an 11.37 "Make the Ark under Our
eyes and Our revelation") he understands it as knowledge,
presumably according to the context. In three other places
(54.13-14, 20.39 and 52.48) he just says that it is "God's
eye". Thus, in the first example he uses the device of
figurative speech (ta'wil),
and in the three other examples he simply states that it is
God's eye without stating either that it is a human eye or
other kind of eye which means that he believes in the sacred
text but cannot know its meaning. In other words, only God
knows its interpretation. Qur'an 20.5 ("The All-compassionate
sat Himself upon the Throne" tr. Arberry) is literally
interpreted by Muqatil so that "He sat Himself upon"
equals "He established Himself on". He does not state that
this act is like a human act. Likewise, Muqatil affirms
man's vision of God without stating its modality. In doing
so he may be regarded as the forerunner of the theory of bi-la
kayfa. To sum up, according to his
exegesis, Muqatil was not a mushabbih
contrary to the reports on him, made by later sources. Very
probably, these sources blamed him of tashbih
on the grounds of his Murji'ite tendencies. An
accusation of tashbih
seems to have been an efficient weapon in Islamic
theological struggles.” [WR:AIQ, 5]
And the various transcendentalist positions—much
closer to the ‘remote/Other’ Allah of the philosophers--
were also condemned early.
“Unrestricted
anthropomorphism did not withstand the onslaught of the
Mu’tazilis; their theology in this respect shaped the Islamic
identity until today. Before their time,
transcendentalism had a precarious stand;
Dja’d b. Dirham and Djahm b. Sufwan were both executed,
though probably for political rather than dogmatical reasons.
At that time, in the late Umayyad period, part of Islamic
theological thinking may still have been tinged by a
Neoplatonic spirit. Dja’d b. Dirham pretended that God
could never have taken Abraham as His “friend” (khalil;
cf. IV, 125) or have spoken to Moses; possibly
he also denied Muhammad’s having seen God during the mi’radj.
Djahm b. Safwan rejected God’s being heard or seen, too; for
him, God
was simply the absolute Power. God is not only beyond any
form, but also beyond being as such; he is not anything (shay).
This was more than the Mu’tazilis later on admitted.” [EI,
s.v. ‘tashbih’]
For example, we see the (heretical) position of
the Jahmites in this period:
“Jahmites.
The followers of Jahm ibn Safwan Abu Muhriz (d. 128/145), a
radical heretic who
taught that God had no attributes, i.e. a God
beyond any comprehension and apprehension, but who also
followed to an extreme the opinions of the determinists,
and apparently held that man had no free-will. This implied
that salvation was pre-determined and that man, in effect,
could not work either for, or against, his salvation. The
Jahmites were condemned by Abu Hanlfah in his Fiqh Akbar.”
[WR:NEI, s.v. Jahmites]
“As
soon as questions were asked about the exact meaning of the
words by which the Koran describes God, these
difficulties were bound to come to the surface.
On the one hand, the one God is supposed to always be present
in His creation, giving it direction. The Koran wants us to
perceive with our senses, apply our names to, and consider the
way He guides His creation; God
has many different ways of recognizing the world and
acting in it. Furthermore, these ways are comparable to
humankind's, except that they are far superior to them
inasmuch as they comprise everything there is and, owing to
God's universal responsibility, cannot be thwarted: He sees
and hears everything, no one can defy Him, especially not the
idols the Meccans worshiped! He pervades everything, in which
regard He is comparable to the "natures" of the ancient
traditions, and at the same time He is supposed to be entirely
different from His creation. He is
a person with human features, and yet this is exactly what
He must not be—a disconcerting dilemma! … This
dilemma could be avoided most easily by de-emphasizing one aspect
in favor of the other, which was
attempted as early
as the end of the Umayyad era. A certain Ja'd
ibn Dirham, whom tradition connects to the last Umayyad,
Marwan II (r. 744-750), is supposed to have said that Abraham
could not have been God's friend, and God could not have
talked to Moses either. Statements like this must have been
perceived as shocking denials of what the Koran stated.
Whether they are the reason Ja'd was executed in Kufa or Wasit
around 743 is uncertain. What
is clear, however, is the thrust of his arguments: God's
transcendent character did not allow direct contact with
Him; consequently, the truth of statements in the
revelation claiming the opposite was eminently doubtful.
The awareness of contradictions of this kind inevitably led to
the nature of the revelation itself becoming a subject of
debate. … Jahm ibn Safwan (d. 746) was given to similar
reflections. He was from Tirmidh or Samarkand and was active
in the eastern part of the Islamic empire. Tradition has it
that he conducted disputes with the so-called Sumaniyya, a
movement that apparently did not believe in a personal god.
The Sumaniyya may have been Buddhists; at that time Tirmidh
was the center of Central Asian Buddhism, which was still in
full bloom. It is certainly conceivable that in his
discussions with the Buddhists Jahm ibn Safwan felt compelled
to struggle for a rational and transcendent concept of God. …
In his theology Jahm made a clear distinction between God and
everything he termed a "thing" (shai').
One must not call God a "thing." This was entirely in
agreement with the Koran, for in sura 39, verse 63, we read
that God is the Creator "of every thing," and sura 42, verse
9, states that "like Him there is naught." … By
definition, God's being absolutely transcended the being
of every "thing." One must by no means ascribe the
quality of a "thing"—which was created in time—to God; this
would imply a similarity between God and the created
things….The theological
movement of the Jahmiyya blossomed particularly in the Islamic
world's eastern part in the second half of the eighth century.
We are familiar with it especially through the polemical
statements leveled against it that disparaged them as
"deflating" (al-mu'attila),
precisely
because it divested the concept of God of all conceivability”
[WR:HIT, 101f]
Early Islam may have rejected transcendentalism
early (only for it to rise again later), but it took a while
and a lot of battles before it accepted that God did not
have a body!
“After
a long fight
among the theological schools the incorporeality of God was
recognized by Islam.” [EI, s.v. “djism”/body]
But it is during this early, pre-formative period
that the Christian doctrine of the trinity influences (or
even ‘raises’?) the issue of the relationship between God’s
essence and His attributes.
This period ends at 750ad, and we know that
Muslim-Christian debates occurred before the death of the
Christian leader John of Damascus in 754.
Hoyland [WR:SIAOSI] has a chapter on the
“Apologies and Disputations” written by non-Muslims about
their (alleged) encounters with Islamic theology.
“The
roots of these controversies between the Muslims and their
subject peoples went back to the late
seventh and early eighth century, when Islam
first began to present itself as "the religion of truth," so
challenging other faiths. But the debate only gathered
momentum once Arabic, established as the administrative
language of the empire by late Umayyad times, had become
accepted as the international medium of scholarship. Whereas
only eight authors are known to have polemicised in Syriac
against Islam from the seventh to the thirteenth century
in Muslim-ruled lands, and even fewer in Greek, as many
did so in Arabic in the first Abbasid century (750-850)
alone. The emergence of Arabic as a lingua
franca and the patronage of scholarship by the
early Abbasid rulers sponsored a kind of Islamic
"enlightenment," fuelled by the transmission of Greek learning
into Arabic, and made Iraq of the ninth and tenth centuries a
centre of lively altercations amongst Jews, Christians,
Muslims, Zoroastrians, Manichaeans and pagan philosophers over
the nature of truth and knowledge.” [WR:SIAOSI:457]
Here are the major ones/dates he lists (pre-10th
century), remembering that many of these would be literary
fictions, but still representative of real interactions
between the Muslims and their subject peoples:
Syriac
texts:
·
Patriarch
John I and an Arab Commander (possible event in 639 or 644;
text in early 700s)
·
A
Monk of Beth Hale and an Arab Notable (text before 750)
·
Timothy
I and caliph Mahdi (between 780 and 785)
·
Story
of the monk Bahira (pre-850)
Greek
texts:
·
John
of Damascus (writing in the 730s)
·
Correspondence
of Leo III (717-41) and Umar II (717-20)
Christian
Arabic Texts:
·
On the Triune Nature of
God
(737 to 788)
·
Papyrus
Schott Reinhard no. 438 (late 700s)
·
Questions and the
rational and religious answers thereto (late 700s)
Jewish
texts:
·
The Ten Wise Jews
(750-800)
Persian/Zoroastrian
texts:
·
Debate
before caliph Mamum (813-33)
·
Doubt-Dispelling
Exposition
(pre New Persion, c.820s)
Latin
texts:
·
Istoria de Mahomet
by John of Seville (based upon pre-750 Greek text)
Several of these texts and/or events occur before
the rise of the Muslim rationalists (Mutazila) in the
770-847ad timeframe, and as such, demonstrate that early
debates about the unity of God, His essence and attributes,
and revelatory language played a major role in the very
emergence of the Islamic ‘problem of the attributes’.
Wolfson describes what such a dispute might have
looked like [WR:POK,129-132]:
“Now
from the Disputatio
Christiani et Saraceni by John of Damascus (d.
ca. 754) we learn that in Syria, after its conquest by the
Muslims in 635, there were debates between Christians and
Muslims on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Let us then
sketch some such typical debate between a Christian and a
Muslim. In such a debate the Christian presumably begins by
explaining that of the three hypostases in the Trinitarian
formula, namely, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by Father is
meant what is generally referred to by both Christians and
Muslims as God and by Son and Holy Spirit are meant the
properties life and knowledge or life and power or knowledge
and power. Turning then to the Muslim, the Christian asks him
if he has any objection to the Christian application of these
properties to God. Immediately the Muslim answers that he has
no objection, adding that the Koran explicitly describes God
as "the living" (al-hayy),
as "the knowing" (al’alim)
and as "the powerful" (al-kadir).
“The
Christian then goes on to report how among the Christians
there is a difference of opinion with regard to the nature of
the second and third hypostases, by which, as he has already
explained, are meant various combinations of the properties
life, knowledge, and power. Some Christians, branded as
heretics, maintain that these two hypostases are mere names of
God. Most Christians, however, and they are the people of
right belief, regard these two hypostases as real things
which, while distinct from the essence of God, are inseparable
from it. Turning again to the Muslim, the Christian asks him
whether he has any objection to the view that life, knowledge,
and power, as properties of God, are real things inseparable
from the essence of God. After some deliberation the Muslim
answers that there is nothing in the Koran which could be
taken to mean opposition to such a view and consequently he is
willing to agree with the people of right belief among the
Christians that life, knowledge, and power as properties of
God are real things.
“The
Christian continues by reporting that among those Christians
who regard the second and third hypostases as real things
there are some, again branded as heretics, who maintain that
these two hypostases are created, whereas all the others, and
they are again the people of right belief, maintain that the
second and third hypostases are coeternal with the first
hypostasis. Turning once more to the Muslim, the Christian
asks him what his view is with regard to the origin of life,
knowledge, and power as properties of God. Immediately the
Muslim answers that, inasmuch as Muslims believe that God is
eternally living and eternally knowing and eternally powerful,
these three properties, already admitted by him to be real
things, are also admitted by him to be coeternal with God.
“The
Christian is then about to conclude his argument. First, he
says, inasmuch as Christians believe that anything eternal is
to be called God, the second and third hypostases are each to
be called God, thus the three hypostases are to be called
three Gods. Second, he says, he is going to prove by arguments
that these three Gods are really one God. But at this point
the Muslim interrupts him by saying: Spare your arguments, for
whatever they may be, the Prophet has warned us against them
by his statement that "they surely are infidels who say, God
is the third of three, for there is no God but one God."
“Thus
gradually in the course of such debates Muslims came to admit
that life, knowledge, and power as properties of God are real
things but to deny that they are to be called Gods, which
admission and denial constitute the Muslim belief in real
attributes as distinguished from the Christian belief in the
Trinity.
“This
is how the doctrine of real attributes was introduced into
Islam.
“Originally,
as we have seen, only three terms, variously arranged in lists
of two terms, were declared to be real attributes, and this
because these three terms in various combinations were, to the
knowledge of the Muslims, used by Christians, in their
formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, as designations of
the second and the third persons, namely, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. Two other terms, speech (or word) and will, were soon
added, as we shall see, to the original list of real
attributes, and this, again, because these terms were used by
Christians as designations of one of the persons of the
Trinity, the Son, and were thus brought into play in the
debates between Muslims and Christians. Gradually other new
terms were added and various lists of attributes were drawn
up, all of them based, as says Maimonides, upon "the text of
some book," that is to say, some text of the Koran or of the
Sunnah as recorded in a Sahih. From (al-) Bagh-dadl we may further
gather that while the orthodox Attributists confined their
lists of attributes to those terms by which God is described
in the Koran and the Sunnah — and any term so used in them
could be included in a list of attributes — the Basra
Mu'tazilites allowed description of God by terms not found in
the Koran and the Sunnah, and one of them, al-Fuwati, on the
other hand, forbade description of God even by some terms
found in these two sources.
“Thus
the orthodox Muslim belief in the reality of attributes is
traceable to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Beginnings:
150-227 / 770-847ad. Dominance of Mutazila/problem of
Oneness.
This period reveals the development of rationalist
Islamic theology, partly from self-reflection, but perhaps
predominantly from its encounter and polemic with other
religions – mostly notably Christian Trinitarian thought (in
its varied formulations of the time).
The rationalists (Mutazila, also called
anti-attributists in our literature) arose to dominance early,
with the traditionalists (aka atttributists in our literature)
reacting to their positions in the next period.
“The early emphasis on divine unity among Muslim
rationalists appears to have resulted from the
perceived influence of Manichaean dualism on some groups
of Shi’Is. But rational arguments for divine
unity were more fully developed in the context of arguments
over the status of a sinner, made famous by the Qadarlyah,
Khawarij, and Murji'ah, and particularly in debates
regarding the status of the Qur'an as created or not
created, and how the multiplicity evident in the world
could have proceeded from a creator who is essentially one. …
The
Muctazilah, among the earliest groups of
thinkers identified by their rationalist approach to
Islamic doctrines, held that the Qur'an
was created. As such, it is to be distinguished from the
divine essence, which is unitary (simple), eternal, and
unchanging. The Qur'an is the word of God, created in time for
humanity. Opponents
of the Muctazilah held that the Qur'an was
uncreated, part of the essence of God. To the
Mu'tazilah, this position appeared to compromise
divine immutability, and thus divine simplicity, and
ultimately divine unity itself.
Indeed, divine unity (tawhid)
became, with divine justice, the Mu'tazilah's
first principle. They were known as "the people of justice [‘adl] and unity [tawhid]." …
Ninth-century cAbbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 813—
833) gave official sanction to the Mu'tazill position;
belief that the Qur'an was created was proclaimed an
article of faith.
However, that position was perceived as a threat to the
traditionalists' position. The divine
essence, according to the Muctazilah, is
beyond human comprehension, whereas the Qur'an, the divine
word, is accessible to human reason. Therefore, the
anthropomorphic references to God in the Qur'an must be
considered allegorically. The
traditionalists, however, favored a literal
interpretation of the Qur'an and reliance on
the practice of the early Islamic community—both without
rationalist interpretation—as the model for community
leadership. Al-Ma'mun's position, therefore, sparked a
rebellion of sorts among their ranks. Traditionalist Ahmad ibn
Hanbal (780-855) was imprisoned, both for his vocal
opposition to the doctrine of the created Qur'an and for his
insistence that human reason and authority are to be resorted
to only in the rare instances where the Qur'an is silent on a
subject and there is no precedent to be derived from early
Muslim practice. … By the middle of the ninth century,
the caliph's authority was severely weakened, and the
traditionalists gained dominance in positions of doctrine and
jurisprudence. [WR:OEMIW, s.v. “Tawhid”, 4:190ff]
Closer to our
topic, the Mutazila specially rejected the position that God
had qualities or attributes which were ‘distinct from’ God’s
essence. They maintained that any such quality or attribute
(especially those in the 99 Names) were identical with God’s
essence and not something independent ‘inside’ God.
“The
first of the five points of the Mu'tazilites was that of
"unity" or rather "assertion of unity" (tawhid), since the
Arabic word means literally "the making one". This implied
for them much more than the mere assertion that God was one
and that there were not many gods.
The Muslims were accustomed to say that God had ninety-nine
"beautiful names", most of which are mentioned in the Qur'an;
seven of them received special attention from the theologians:
the Knowing (or Omni-scient), the Powerful (or Almighty), the
Willing, the Living, the Hearing, the Seeing, the Speaking.
Some theologians held that God had certain attributes (sifat)
corresponding to these names, namely, Knowledge, Power, Will,
etc. To
the Mu'tazilites, however, this seemed to be introducing
an element of multiplicity into the unity of the divine
nature or essence (nafs, dhat), and in insisting on
"unity" they were asserting that these attributes had no
sort of independent or hypostatic existence, but were
merged in the unity of God’s being. In so far
as God knew, he knew by himself or his essence, and not by any
hypostatic Knowledge. [WR:IPT, 63f]
“On
the doctrine of Allah, they, as we have seen, especially
objected to his qualities. These were contrary to his unity;
at least they must be described as being his essence, not as
in his essence. But they tended to reject them altogether,
and to reduce Allah to a vague unity. [WR:SEI, s.v. “Allah”,
37f]
But the
Mutazila rejection of the (independent or hypostatic)
reality of the attributes was connected polemically against
Christian thought:
“A
suggestion as to the Christian origin of the belief in the
reality of divine attributes is to be found in the discussion
of that problem in the literature of the time when the problem
was still a vital issue. The belief in the reality of divine
attributes was characterized by those who were opposed to it
as being analogous to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Abul-faraj, also known as Bar Hebraeus, speaking
of the Mu'tazilites, who denied the reality of divine
attributes, says that thereby they steered clear of "the
persons (akanim)
of the Christians," the implication
being that the belief in the reality
of divine attributes indirectly steers one into the belief
of the Christian Trinity. 'Adad al-DIn al-Iji
similarly reports that the Mu'tazilites accused those who
believed in the reality of divine attributes of having fallen
into the error of the Christian belief in the Trinity. And
prior to both of them, among the Jews, David al-Mukammas,
Saadia, Joseph al-Basir, and Maimonides, evidently reflecting
still earlier Muslim sources, whenever they happen to mention
the Muslim doctrine of the reality of divine attributes,
compare it to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It is
thus in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity that we must
look for the origin of the Muslim doctrine of divine
attributes. [WR:POK:112f]
The Mutazila
were brilliant, but their thought led to extreme
transcendence of God, and separated Him from the worshipper:
“One
of the major difficulties that confronted Mu'tazilism was
manifested in
the denial of the personal, intimate and uncanny
"relation" of the worshipper with God, as
what grounds the realities of religious experience. By
reducing the attributes to the essence, the Mu'tazila
seemed to deny worshippers the object of their praise,
exaltation and piety. On their view, God
is no longer truly seen as the Beneficent, Ever-Merciful
Almighty, to whom believers turn in their supplications and
invocations in seeking mercy and salvation. Unlike the
traditionalists, the Mu'tazilites might even have subverted
the obligatory nature of prayer by indirectly emptying it of
its content. By replacing the personal character of the
Exalted One with a neuter qualification, their opinions became
unintentionally closer to the outlook of the pagan Greeks
than to the fundamental perspective of monotheism. One
wonders how some qur'anic verses would be
meaningfully interpretable if God's attributes and
names were reducible to His essence. How would a believer
heed, with intimacy, fear and hope, verses like: "He is
the Beneficent [al-barr),
the Ever-Merciful [al-rahman]" (52:28),
"God warns you against His Chastisement" (3:28), "All
praise belongs to God" (17:111), "Ask forgiveness of God,
surely God is Most Forgiving" (4:106)?”
[WR:CCCIT, 124f, Nader El-Bizri, “God: essence and
attributes”]
The last Mutazila to exercise any significant
influence on the developing orthodoxy of the Sunni’s was Abu
Hashim (d. 933). He realized that the standard Mutazila stance
that the attributes were ‘mere names’ of God—and not real
‘attributes’—was unacceptable. He advanced a theory of ‘modes’
(or ‘states’) which tried to find a ‘half-way point’ between
the two:
“Then, in the course of this
questioning by "our fellow orthodox," Abu Hashim seems to have
begun to apply his theory of modes to the problem of divine
attributes and to speak of "the abwal of the Creator" and, in
answer to a direct question with regard to the modes in their
application to the Creator, he said that "they are neither He
nor other than He." This,
as we shall see later, is an old formula, which had been used
by the Attributists as a denial of the Christian belief that
the second and third persons of the Trinity are each God but
to which Abu Hashim gave a new meaning as a denial of both the
reality of attributes as conceived of by the Attributists and
the verbality of attributes as conceived of by the
Mu'tazilites. Undoubtedly in the course of his answers to the
various challenging questions he also had occasion to say that
the modes in their application to divine attributes, like the
modes as a general theory of predication, are "neither
existent nor non-existent," for elsewhere it is directly
reported that "Abu Hashim posited modes as attributes which
are neither existent [nor nonexistent]." … Thus
Abu Hashim by his theory of modes has placed himself in
opposition to the conception of attributes of both the
Attributists and the Mu'tazilites. But here a question arises
in our minds. Inasmuch as Abu Hashim's theory of modes is a
denial of the verbality of attributes as conceived of by the
Mu'tazilites, it
must follow that the differences between the various modes
predicated of God are not mere nominal or verbal
differences, and hence also the plurality of
modes in God is not a mere nominal or verbal plurality.
How then would Abu Hashim have met the Mu'tazilite argument
that, inasmuch as the unity of God includes internal unity in
the sense of absolute simplicity, a plurality in God of modes
like those conceived of by Abu Hashim would be incompatible
with the internal unity and simplicity of God? Now,
as we have seen, when the Attributists were confronted by
the Mu'tazilites with this argument, they downrightly
denied that the unity of God includes internal unity in
the sense of absolute simplicity, maintaining that the
unity of God, according to their own conception of it,
does not exclude from Him a plurality of parts which from
eternity have been united with each other and with the
essence of God. … In his
Milal, after stating that Abu Hashim "posited modes as
attributes which are neither existent [nor nonexistent]
and neither cognizable nor incognizable," he
[Shahrastani] adds: "Then Abu Hashim posits of God
another mode (halah) which necessarily causes (aujabat)
these modes." Almost in the same words he says in his
Nihdyat that "Abu Hashim posits another mode (halah)
which necessarily causes these modes." In another place
in his Nihdyat, he quotes Abu Hashim as saying:
"Knowingness is a mode and powerfulness is a mode, and
benefiting both of them is a mode (hal) which
necessarily causes all the modes." In still
another place in the same work, he makes an opponent of
modes say: "Did not Abu Hashim posit of God a mode (hal)
which necessarily causes His being knowing and willing?"
[WR:POK, 171-173]
“According to these
statements, then, the theory of modes introduced two
innovations. … First, it gave a new meaning to the old formula
"neither God nor other than God" and it also framed the new
formula "neither existent nor nonexistent," using both of
these formulae as a description of modes in their contrast to
attributes as conceived by both the Attributists and the
Mu'tazilites. Second,
it introduced the view that modes, the new name for
attributes, are related to God as effects to their cause. That was something new, for
to the Attributists there was no causal relationship
between God and His attributes. From the
earliest times the attributes are spoken of as being coeternal
with God or as subsisting in His essence or as being
superadded to His essence, without
any suggestion that they were proceeding from Him as from
a cause. Only with reference to the attribute
of word or speech, in the sense of the eternal Koran, is God
conceived of as the cause of that attribute. The absence of
any conception of causal relationship between the essence of
God and His attributes among the orthodox Attributists is
clearly implied in Ibn Kullab's description of the divine
attributes as being "ceaselessly uncreated," that is to say,
eternally uncaused. It is more clearly brought out in Ghazali
who openly discusses the problem of the relation between the
attributes of God and His essence. The
view which he maintains in effect is that the essence is
not in need of the attributes for its existence, whereas
the attributes are in need of the essence for their
existence, for as attributes they are in need of a subject
(mausuf) in which to exist. But the existence
of attributes in a subject, he goes on to explain, does not
establish between them a causal relationship in the true sense
of the term, that is, in the sense of the relationship between
an effect and its "efficient cause" ('illah fa'iliyyah), even
though, he adds, philosophers in their artificial terminology
call the subject of which an attribute is predicated a
"receptive cause" ('illah kabliyyah) and the attribute
predicated of the subject a "caused thing" (ma'lul).” [WR:POK,
174f]
The problem of ‘how there can be attributes and
there still be oneness’ remains unsolved. The rationalist and
anti-attributist position of the Mutazila—affirming that God
is a monadic ‘point’ without any internal differentiation or
complexity—fails to match the experience of the believers and
the wording of their Scripture.
Orthodoxy
emerges: 230-320 / 850-940ad. Rise of Asharite Compromise
In this period, the Traditionalist/Attributist
opposition to Rationalist Mutazila thought becomes focused
and embodied in the position of Ahmad b. Hanbal, and then
refined and championed by a convert from Mutazilism, Abu
Hasan al-Ashari. It eventually triumphs over Mutazilite
thought and becomes the dominant Sunni orthodox position
until modern times.
The Mutazilite position on the
attributes-equal-essence and on non-literal interpretation
soon led them into conflict with the Traditionalists. This
brought the difficulties of each position further into the
light:
“In
addressing the question of divine essence and attributes, the
Mu'tazilites typically stressed the equivalence between sifa (attribute), wasf (description)
and ism (name).
Based on this principle of sameness, the Mu'tazilites
held that if we converse about divine attributes we ultimately
describe divinity. The Hanbalites, and most Ash'arites,
opposed this claim by drawing a thoughtful distinction between
sifa and wasf, positing the
former as being "what is intrinsically in something", while
taking the latter to denote "what is given as a descriptive
report [khabar] about
something". However, any account of the attributes has to pass
by a hermeneutic or exegetical position with regard to
scripture. … Given
that the Qur'an (as God's Word) mentions the divine
attributes in conjunction with His "most beautiful
names" [asma' Allah
al-husna), one could easily assert that
this entails an affirmation of the ontological reality of
these attributes. However, this will require a
particular method of reading the Qur'an that affirms
the attributes without undermining transcendence and
unity, or implying anthropomorphism. Inevitably,
one
wonders how successfully anthropomorphism can be avoided
when accounting for verses like "your Lord's Face ever
remains" (55:27), or "I created with My own hands"
(38:75). In
addition, it is hardly evident how the multiplicity which
is implied by any affirmation of the attributes might be
reconciled with the idea of God's absolute unity.
… From a religious perspective, the Qur'an sets canonical
measures for the human condition, while being the locus of
textual hermeneutics. Hence, faith is grounded by textuality
along with its determining semantics and semiotics. Yet the
Qur'an, as God's Word, is manifested in a "language" that is
grasped religiously as being unlike any human idiom. As a
divine "language", revelation is not part of the created world
of composite substances or contingent beings that are subject
to generation and corruption. Any
account of the question of God's essence and attributes
thus requires some uneasy meditations on the reality of
divine speech (kalam). Centrally, the
essence-attributes question calls for thinking about the
nature of the Qur'an as God's Word. Historically, this tension
soon broke surface in the radical disputes that occurred
between the Mu'tazilites and the early Sunni theologians.
[WR:CCCIT, 122, Nader El-Bizri, “God: essence and attributes”]
The position of Hanbal (born 855ad) was not the
first traditionalist response/rejection of Mutazilite
rationalism (and their denial of literal interpretation and of
the reality of the attributes), but it was the first
successful one.
“THE
HANBALITE POSITION. The
Hanbalites believed that God's revelation is there to be
recited, and that no interpretations will exhaust its sense. The
ontological status of the attributes will remain
concealed, and the most that one can affirm about them is
their existence, on the grounds that they are mentioned in
the Qur'an….Prior to the concretisation of the
Ash'arite school the Hanbalites opposed speculation in
religious matters. However,
with Ash'arism, theological inquiries were encouraged,
although there was no presupposition that they
necessarily yielded definite clues about the nature of the
divine essence or readily facilitated the acquisition of
real knowledge about God. Yet the Hanbalite line continued
to maintain that any such moves would be mere linguistic,
grammatical or conceptual verbiage, which might well lead
to repugnant errors in matters of faith. The
truth of the divine essence is veiled, and the principle
of transcendence is not to be compromised by speculation.
Even if attributes are disclosed in a language accessible to
humans, their meaning is not exhaustible by reasoned
explications. Given
that the divine names and attributes are revealed through
God's words in the Qur'an, it becomes religiously
obligatory to affirm their reality with conviction and
sincerity in belief. [WR:CCCIT, 124f, Nader
El-Bizri, “God: essence and attributes”]
“This
is also confirmed in the Hanbalite position, which according
to Ibn Batta is best defined by attributing to God what He
attributed to Himself in the Qur'an, and following what the
Prophet attributed to Him in the hadith, without asking lima (why?) or kayf (how?). One
thus ought to submit to God's qudra (power) by way
of having simple faith in what is absent and unseen (al-ghayb): "sights
cannot attain Him; He can attain sights" (Qur'an 6:103). The
Hanbalite tradition ultimately affirms a belief in all
that is mentioned in the Qur'an, be it in its definite [muhkam] senses
or its equivocal ambiguities (mutashabih), while
fundamentally consigning [tafwid] the
"meaning and howness" of the attributes to God alone.
[WR:CCCIT, 127, Nader El-Bizri, “God: essence and attributes”]
Hanbal was very anti-rational, as is clear from
the quote (cited above):
“They
[true Muslims] are not upholders of analogical reasoning and
reasoned opinion, for analogical reasoning in religion is
worthless, and reasoned opinion is the same and worse.”
[WR:ICAS, p39; Hanabalite creed, article 16]
But in the process of refuting the Mutazilites,
the Traditionalists/attributists (beginning with the
Hanbalites, but continuing on to the current time) end up
‘dancing around’ the problem of God’s oneness. Their rejection
of Mutazila theological positions were more by ‘vagueness’
(i.e. we do not know how) than by a theological position. And
the internal arguments within Islam mirrored the SAME
arguments within Christian Trinitarian debates:
“Since
the arguments used by the Mu'tazilites for the denial of the
reality of attributes were based upon their own particular
conception of the meaning of "eternity" and of the
meaning of the "unity of God," the Attributists, in their
refutation of the Mu'tazilites, attack the Mu'tazilite
conception of the meaning of these two terms. … First,
they
reject the Mu'tazilite claim that eternity means deity.
To quote: "Your argument that if a real attribute is eternal
it must be God is a bare assertion and is subject to dispute,
and your assertion that eternity is a description most
peculiar to God is an assertion for which there is no
demonstration." This
exchange of opinion between the Mu'tazilites and the
Attributists with regard to eternity is, in its historical
context, a debate over the question whether to accept the
established Christian view, inherited from Philo, that
eternity spells deity. For the Church Fathers, as we have
seen, without any recorded opposition, adopted this Philonic
view, so that John of Damascus, in a debate supposed to be
held between a Christian and a Muslim, makes the Christian
force the Muslim to admit that the Word of God is uncreated,
that is, eternal, and then, on the basis of this admission,
forces him to admit that the Word of God is God, on the ground
that "everything that is not created, but uncreated, is God." The
Mu'tazilites accept this Christian principle and hence
argue that the attributes of the Attributists must be
Gods, whereas the Attributists reject this Christian
conception of eternity and hence refute the Mu'tazilite
argument…. Accordingly,
just
as the Mu'tazilites rejected the reality of attributes
by arguments by which Christian heretics rejected the
reality of the second and third persons of the Trinity,
so the orthodox Muslims defended the reality of
attributes by arguments by which Christian orthodoxy
defended the reality of the second and third persons.
The orthodox Christian defense of the reality of the second
and third persons of the Trinity consisted in rejecting the
Philonic conception of the absolute unity of God and by
maintaining that the unity of God is only a relative kind of
unity, a conception of unity which does not exclude from God,
who is one, the composition of three elements which from
eternity existed together and were never separated. So also the orthodox Muslim
defense of the reality of attributes, as it was
ultimately given expression by Ghazali, reduces itself
to an insistence upon a relative conception of the unity
of God, which does not exclude its being internally
composed of real attributes which existed together from
eternity and were never separated. …
And so, the views of the orthodox Muslims and the Mu'tazilites
on the problem of attributes, as well as the arguments
employed by them, correspond exactly to the views of orthodox
Christians and the heretical Sabellians on the question of the
persons of the Word and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. The issue between the
Attributists and the Antiattributists was thus clearly
defined. It was an issue whether the unity of God was
absolute or only relative. To the Attributists the unity
of God was a relative unity, and hence they assumed in
God the existence from eternity of real attributes.
To the Antiattributists the unity of God was an absolute
unity, and hence the terms attributed to God were mere names.
There were, however, some modified views among the
Attributists as well as some modified views among the
Antiattributists. Among the Attributists, there were some who,
while believing in the reality of attributes, denied that they
were uncreated. … Among
the Antiattributists there were some who, while denying that
attributes were real things, denied also that they were mere
names and advanced a theory known as that of modes.”
[WR:POK,
137-140]
So, within the pre-Asharite traditionalists were
other attempts to refine the semi-agnostic position of the
orthodox attributists (e.g. through the concept of modes/abwal), but
these only introduced more problems.
The definitive
step toward a ‘normative’ Islamic theology was introduced by
a Mutazila who ‘converted’ to a Hanbalite position and
eventually modified the position into what we know today as
Sunni orthodoxy. This key thinking was Abu Hasan al-Ashari,
who lived 873-935. He converted from Mutazila rationalism in
912, spending most of his life in Basra and Baghdad.
He introduced a compromise between the strong
anti-rationalism of Hanbal and the strong pro-rationalist
positions of the Mutazila.
“THE ASH'ARITE POSITION. Unlike the
Hanbalite view, the distinctive position of al-Ash'ari is best
expressed by way of his support of kalam methods in
elucidating the essence-attributes question. After
all, he disapproved of unreflective deference to doctrinal
dogmas by way of mimetic assent [taqlid], given
his firm belief that Muslims have the duty to reason about
what it means to know God, since knowing God amounts to
knowing the truth [al-haqq).
In response to
the Mu'tazilite reductive overemphasis on transcendence,
Ash'ari argued that God's words about God, as manifested in
the Qur'an, set up the directives by virtue of which reasoned
judgements about the essence-attributes question are to be
measured. The
affirmation of God's attributes should be coupled
with the negation of implied anthropomorphic
determinations. Analogy is problematic when it hints at
any form of similitude between God and anything in His
world of creation. Authentically to believe
that "nothing is like Him" (42:11) obligates a refutation of tashbih and tamthil. If the
attributes are examined through a radically literal reading,
heretical innovation may ensue, as exemplified in the
unsustainable doctrines of anthropomorphists [mushabbiha] and
corporealists {mujassima).
Yet
some attributes retain the semblance of carrying
anthropomorphic meanings when judged from the standpoint
of generic resemblances. … Strict literal exegesis [tafsir], or
excessive hermeneutics [ta'wil],
may result in groundless extremisms.
In emphasising the literal exoteric meaning [zahii), the exegete
might present anthropomorphist accounts that compromise
transcendence [tanzih], while
the stress on the esoteric hidden sense [batin] might lead
the hermeneutic interpreter to accord with the outlooks of the
various batiniyya sects.
Moderation in
scriptural readings is to be situated between two
extremist poles in interpretation that might lead
to heresies, in the form either of a literal
anthropomorphism or of the overcoming of its entailments
through an excessive allegorical overemphasis on
transcendence. This semantic tension characterises the
reception of revealed texts and their multi-layered
readings.
Faced with the difficulty of
interpreting expressions like "God's hand" ("I created with My
own hands" [38:75]) or "God's face" ("your Lord's Face ever
remains" [55 '.27]), Ash'ari
does
not question the realities to which they point, since these
are qur'anic statements. However,
he again seeks a middle path, refusing to affirm that the
referents of God's "hand" or "face" are either corporeal
members or mere metaphors. Again he is guarding
against excess in literal exegesis, while being
suspicious of allegorical hermeneutics. Despite this
desire for a median position, however, he proclaims that any
departure from literal readings must be based on valid
reasons. When
any form of resemblance, similitude or analogy between God
and anything in the world of His creation is refuted, this
applies to linguistic, ontological and logical reflections
on the essence-attributes question. There is an
unbridgeable existential-essential gap between creator and
created. To hint that God resembles
worldly beings is absurd. A semblance of linguistic
affinity in reference to attributes does not affirm a
similitude in signification. As
Ash'ari holds, "God is not in His creatures nor are His
creatures in Him." In his Letter
to the Frontiersmen [Risala ila ahl al-thaghr), he
refutes any mode of equivalence between the divine essence
and the divine attributes. Yet while the attributes are
not reducible to the essence, they are not accidents that
are other than it. This ontological difference is
not simply a mode of separation
in being. In elaborating
his thesis, Ash'ari considered with care and thoughtfulness
the conditions by virtue of which inferences may be drawn
with respect to what is absent and transcendent,
on the basis of what is phenomenally experienced;
following in this the classical method known as "al-istidlal 'ala al-gha'ib
bi'l-shahid". [WR:CCCIT, 128,9;
Nader El-Bizri, “God: essence and attributes”]
His compromise, however, will be yet another case
of recognizing-but-avoiding the problem. It will use the
traditional escape clause of “without asking HOW”. This
respects the mystery of God, of course, but it solves no
problems. It avoids contradictions and logical inconsistencies
by not taking a propositional stance. For Hanbal, the words of
the Quran and hadith are merely ‘pronounced’, but Ashari
allowed for some reflection upon the meaning—subject to the
constraints of perceived orthodoxy of the time.
“Some idea may be gained of
the theological position of al-Ash'ari by considering
under four heads his differences from the
Mu'tazilites. This will also reveal his affinity to
Ahmad ibn-Hanbal. Firstly, he held that the Qur'an was
uncreated and was the very Speech of God, and that it,
like his other attributes, was eternal and in some
sense distinct from his essence. He
does not here appear to have added anything of note to
the doctrine of Ahmad ibn-Hanbal, though there is
greater subtlety in his arguments. Something similar
may be said about the second point, the
anthropomorphic expressions in the Qur'an. The
Mu'tazilites had held, for example, that where the
Qur'an speaks about God's "hand" what is meant is his
"grace"; this could be supported by metaphorical
usages of the word "hand" in Arabic, comparable to the
English "lend a hand". On
such points al-Ash'ari opposed the Mu'tazilites,
and insisted that such Quranic phrases must simply
be accepted "without specifying how ".
Under the third head come various eschatological
matters, which al-Ash'ari insisted must be taken as
they stand and not explained as metaphors. Most
discussion was devoted to the vision of God in
Paradise by the faithful. Here the tendency of the
Mu'tazilites was to say that this meant they would
know him in their hearts (the heart being the seat of
knowledge); but al-Ash'ari argued forcibly that the
phrase "looking to their Lord" could mean only looking
in the normal sense. He understood the vision of
course "without specifying how", and would have
rejected the attribution to God of anything resembling
corporeality. [WR:IPT,85f]
In the same way Ash'ari
applies Hanbali formulae to the anthropomorphic verses
of the Qur'an, which speak of God's hands, eyes, face,
of his 'seating himself upon his throne'. Here, it is
necessary to use the expressions of the Qur'an and
hadith, while indeed denying that God has hands like
our human limbs, which was the error of the extreme
literalists who 'corporized' God (mujassima);
but refusing to interpret these
expressions as metaphors, according to the ta’wil
of the Mu'tazilites. For example,
to interpret the 'sitting upon the throne' as
explaining the majesty of God and his rule over the
world would lead to the statement that God sits upon
all that he rules. It must be said that these verses
indicate real attributes, but 'without asking how' (bi-la
kayfa, the balkafa
already formulated by Malik b. Anas
and adopted by the Hanbalis). [WR:HIIT, 205]
“His names and his attributes
(asma'
wa-sifat) are firstly those
attributed to him by the Qur'an and hadith, as
Hanbalism demanded. But also those demanded by the
rules of the language: to say that a being knows ('alim:
a 'knowing' being) requires him to have knowledge ('ilm);
to be powerful (qadir),
to possess power (qudra);
willing (murid),
to possess a will (irada);
hearing (sami)
to possess hearing (sam);
seeing (basir)
to possess sight (basar);
speaking (kalim)
to possess speech (kalam).
Thus
the Qur'an often says that God is 'seeing' (basir)
but never speaks of God's 'sight' (basar).
However,
from the rules of human language, it is possible to
deduce from the Qur'anic name 'seeing' the attribute
of 'sight' and apply it to God, although the Qur'an
does not mention it and the Hanbalites rejected it. …
These names and
attributes, revealed or deduced, correspond to
realities in God and are not
to be identified simply with his essence, as the
Mu'tazila declared. However, they are not something
other than God, who is one and indivisible. Ash'ari
uses the Zaydi and Hanbali formula: they are 'neither
God nor anything other than God' (la
'aynuhu wa-la ghayruhu). A
simplistic formula, inadequate for the
theologian, but which has the merit of
respecting the mystery of God.”
[WR:HIIT, 204]
“But did they have to confine themselves to
repeating Qur'an and hadith, excluding all rational
elaboration based on human experience and language, as the
Hanbalis demanded? Ash'ari, accustomed by Mu'tazilism to
rational theology, did not think so. On the one hand, the
doctrines of the Qur'an and hadith had to be defended against
opponents who used rational argumentation. On the other hand,
the Qur'an affirms that the existence and harmony of creation
are the sign of God's existence and of his unity.” [WR:HIIT,
202f]
But this position also leaves the problem
unsolved—their view of the attributes as something ‘extra’
in/from God’s essence would be an affront to doctrines of
extreme unicity/simplicity.
“The traditionalists' position was eventually
systematized under the influence and name of its main
thinker (who had actually began his career as a Mutazili), Abu
al-Hasan al-Ashcari (d. about 936). According
to the Ash'ari interpretation, the Qur'an is the uncreated
word of God, coeternal with God. But, as noted above, the
createdness of the Qur'an had been asserted in order to
protect the unity of God. Therefore, the Ashcari
thinkers were compelled to demonstrate that their
position did not compromise divine unity. It was for
this reason that Ash'ari thinkers became insistent on
divine unity and transcendence. God is
one, unique and eternal, and there is no god but the almighty
God. They believed that divine unity could be preserved by
viewing the divine attributes, including speech and action (or
will, power, and knowledge), as additional (za'idah)
to the divine essence. In this
context, they argued that if the divine will is an
attribute and is identical with the divine essence, as in
the Mu'tazili position, then God's freedom of choice is called
into question. God would be compelled by his very nature
(essence) to act. The Mu'tazilah, however, believed that their
assertion that the divine will is created would preclude
such a conclusion. …
Yet ultimately, for the Ashcariyah, the divine
essence is inaccessible to human reason. God is known to
human beings only through revelation;
indeed, the verses of the Qur'an are called ayat ("signs")
of God, and revelation should be accepted at face value.
Ashcari doctrine holds, for example, that God is
truly on his throne (according to Qur'an 20.5) and that
God has hands (Qur'an 38.75 and 5.64). … . However, the Ashcari
interpretation continues, in none of these cases (i.e., on the
questions of apparent anthropomorphization of God, the lack of
free will, and God's creation of evil) are humans to
question the modality, or how it is that these things are
true. All revelation is to be accepted literally but bi-la kayf ("without
[asking]
how"). Later Ashcari thinkers allowed that
some things about God are accessible to human reason ('aqliyat),
such as that God's attributes do not
compromise divine unity (tawhid),
but regarding the nature of those attributes,
we know only what the prophets taught (sam’iyat). In
this way, Ash'arism, which dominated Sunni Islamic
orthodoxy from the tenth to the nineteenth century,
insisted on divine unity, but it rejected interpretations
of revelation that would make that unity accessible to
human reason in favor of assertions of ultimate divine
transcendence. ” [WR:OEMIW, s.v. “Tawhid”, 4:190ff]
It is interesting to note that Ashari uses a
‘logical absurdity’ argument against his fellow-student Abu
Hasham, while being vulnerable to it himself (in his view of
the attributes ‘being neither God nor not God’)…
“The chief
exponent of the opposition to modes from among the orthodox
attributists was Ash'ari. As restated
by Shahrastani in his Milal, Ash'ari begins with a statement
that all those in Islam who participated in the discussion of
the problem of attributes begin with the common premise that
there is a Creator who is to be described as powerful and
knowing and willing. He then proceeds to argue that these
three terms predicated of God must differ from each other in
meaning, whence, he wants us to conclude, they must differ
also from the essence of God of which they are predicated. The
question, therefore, is only as to what the nature of that
difference is. Three alternative answers are enumerated by
him. The predicates may be each either (1) a mere word (lafz),
which is the view of Jubbal, or (2) a mode (lhl), which is the
view of Abu Hashim, or (3) a real attribute (sifah), the view
which he himself is going to defend, after he has refuted both
Jubbal and Abu Hashim. … In his criticism of Jubbal, Ash'ari
contends that distinctions conceived by the mind reflect
certain realities which are quite independent of the words by
which these distinctions are expressed, and so distinctions
cannot be mere words. To quote: "The intellect determines what
difference of meaning there is between two concepts, and were
it supposed that there was no word at all, the intellect would
still be in no doubt [as to the meaning of the differences] in
its conceptions." This
is exactly like the Modalists' argument against the view that
universals are mere words as quoted by Razi. … In his
criticism of Abu Hashim, Ash'ari
repeats the argument already raised by the Mu'tazilites
against the theory of modes, namely, that it is contrary
to the Law of Excluded Middle. His argument, as reported
by Shahrastani, reads as follows: "The assumption of an
attribute which can be described neither by existence
nor by nonexistence is the assumption of something
which is in the middle between existence and
nonexistence, between affirmation and negation, but
this is something absurd." …
With the elimination of these two alternative possibilities,
Ash'ari is left with the third possibility, namely, the old
orthodox conception of attributes as being real things
subsisting in God from eternity.” [WR:POK, 204f]
Might not this charge also be fairly made against
the Asharite position: the attributes are neither God nor
anything other than God—what is ‘in the middle’ here?
Orthodoxy
dominates: 320-480 / 940-1100ad. Apex of Sunni/Asharite
Rationalism
By the time we get here, the question of the
relationship of God’s essence and attributes is frozen. The
Asharites continue to develop refinements to their views of
the attributes as ‘additional’ and/or ‘real’, but the
position begins to look more and more like the original
Christian position.
So, Ibn Hazm (944-1064ad) can fault Asharite
reasoning as being no different from Christians!
“In the problem of
attributes, as we have noted, while Islam had taken over from
Christianity the conception of the existence of real persons
or hypostases in God, which it transformed into attributes, it
constantly insisted, in opposition to Christianity, that they
are not God. This was the fundamental distinction between the
Christian Trinity and the Muslim attributes. In
the course of time, however, among certain Muslims, who
were regarded as orthodox, this difference between
the Christian Trinity and the Muslim attributes was
somewhat blurred. We gather this from the
following statement in Ibn Hazm: "To one of the
Ash'arites I said: Since you say that coexistent with God are
fifteen attributes, all of them other than He and all of them
eternal, why do you find fault with the Christians when they
say that God is 'the third of three'? He said to me: We find
fault with the Christians only because they assume that there
coexist with God only two things and do not assume that there
coexist with Him a greater number of things.
Indeed, one of the Ash'arites has already told me that the
name 'God,' that is, our use of the term 'God,' is a word
which applies to the essence of the Creator and the
totality of His attributes, and not to His essence without
His attributes."
From these answers of the followers of the
Ash'arite teachings, we may gather that somehow within this
orthodox group there were some who forgot that the original
opposition to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was on the
ground of the application of the term "God" to the second and
third persons.
Quite oblivious of this fundamental opposition, they were
willing to apply the term "God" as a common
appellation of God and His attributes, which is only
an adoption of the Christian view that the term "God" is
to be used as a common appellation of the Father and the
two other persons, though, I imagine, these
Ash'arites would still balk at calling each individual
attribute "God." The
emphasis that the term "God" is not to be applied to the
essence alone without the attributes and the statement
that the difference between their belief and that of the
Christians consists only in the fact that the Muslim
attributes are more numerous than the Christian persons
indicate that in all other respects their attributes
assume the character of the Christian persons.”
[WR:POK, 312-315]
Greek
philosophy invades: 455-600 / 1075-1220ad. Aristotle and
Avicenna (d.1038)
In this period, Aristotelian logic influences
Asharite orthodoxy, and the philosophers (falasifa) revert
back to a Mutazila-like rejection of the attributes of God.
Often this looks like a via
negativa – only negative statements about God
can be made.
“Another
influence was Greek philosophy. The students of it in Islam
were going to the roots of all things, and, with it as guide,
they attacked the problem of the nature of Allah. Unity
(tawhid), religiously
and philosophically, they had to preserve; but, in
preserving it, the nature of Allah himself was gradually
reduced to a bare, undefinable something, described
in negatives. For example, Allah for Muhammad
was the Knower (al-calim).
Therefore, he must have the quality ‘ilm, "knowledge".
But of what was his knowledge, of something within himself or
without ? If the first, there was a duality in himself; if the
second, his knowledge depended upon something outside of
himself and was not absolute; therefore he himself, the
possessor of this quality, was not absolute. Evidently, if
Allah's unity and independence were to be preserved, he could
not be given any positive description. [WR:SEI, s.v. “Allah”,
37f]
“This conflict
is connected with the refusal of
some theologians and the Muslim philosophers who were strongly
influenced by Greek philosophy to give positive attributes to God.
Al-Kindi,
for example, the first Muslim philosopher, was not willing
to confirm certain qualities in God for fear of violating
His unity, since attributes mean adding to God different
qualities, which would show Him in different and changing
states, from being known to creating, hearing,
seeing, punishing and so on. However, Muslim theologians
including the Mu'tazilites follow the Qur'an, in considering
that God has positive attributes and can be described. Although
the Qur'an predicates to God many human attributes such as
those mentioned above, it declares that "nothing is like
unto Him." This divine transcendence made many
theologians question and reflect on the manner in
which the divine essential attribute can be related to
God's essence while retaining His transcendence.
Again, the difficulty here is how it is possible for God to
know or to be able without possessing knowledge or ability?
For if He has knowledge and ability then they must be eternal
like Him. Muslim theologians discussed all the possibilities:
are these qualities eternal notions which have always existed
with God? This would mean that God is not the first eternal.
Or are they part of His essence? This would mean that since
God is (a unitary) One, then all His attributes must be
dissolved into one quality. Or
are these qualities neither in God nor independent of
His essence? But this is in a way absurd.
[WR:GAHIIT, 43]
The great Muslim philosopher Avicenna held to a
very strong anti-attributist view, and was taken to task by
al-Ghazali:
“Nevertheless,
according
to Ghazali, Avicenna's views result in a contradiction.
This is the case given that, according to the philosophers and
the Mu'tazila, the
affirmation that God possesses the attribute of knowledge
implies multiplicity. And, following
in Mu'tazilite footsteps, the philosophers exaggerated
their strict avoidance of plurality to the
point of claiming that "if the First were to have a quiddity
characterized by existence this would constitute
multiplicity". This position is based on the widespread
Avicennan view that the "Necessary Existent" is without
quiddity (that its essence is none other than its existence).
Attributes
need a subject to which they are attributed, which is
called al-mawsuf. To
say that the essence of the First Principle is His
intellect, knowledge, power or will is to say that these
attributes are self-subsisting. However, it is
impossible that the attributes are self-sustaining because
they would then be multiple necessary existents, and as
Avicenna has shown, this is not possible. Consequently,
attributes subsist in the divine essence; and as Ghazali
asserted, the First Principle cannot be denied His attributes,
quiddity or reality.” [WR:CCCIT, 134, Nader
El-Bizri, “God: essence and attributes”]
This is again the same phenomenon we have seen
before: to take a position (on the relation between essence
and attributes) either leads to contradiction, or to a denial
of either the attributes or of the ‘featureless nature’ of
God.
………………………………………….. …………………………………………………….
Now, at this point we can stop and compare these
Islamic positions/statements with Christian statements—and
we can see that the same problems (unity and diversity) lead
to the same kinds of statements.
The Muslim can
state that God is one and yet has more-than-one attribute
subsisting within the divine nature—and yet admits that they
have no clue ‘how’ this could be. So too can the Christian:
“But
our inability
to understand how God is both one and three
tells us far more about ourselves than it does about God. The
Bible presents God as both one and three; that suffices for us
to know that He is so,
regardless of whether we understand the how of it.
[Cabal, T., Brand, C. O., Clendenen, E. R., Copan, P.,
Moreland, J., & Powell, D. (2007). The Apologetics Study
Bible: Real Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith
(1459). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.]
The Muslim can
state that the attributes of God are revealed truths and not
rationality-based, and as such, they are beyond full
comprehension. So too the Christian:
“TRINITY
Theological term used to define God as an undivided unity
expressed in the threefold nature of God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Spirit. As a
distinctive Christian doctrine, the Trinity is considered
as a divine mystery beyond human comprehension to be
reflected upon only through scriptural revelation.
The Trinity is a biblical concept that expresses the dynamic
character of God, not a Greek idea pressed into Scripture from
philosophical or religious speculation. … A
proper biblical view of the Trinity balances the concepts
of unity and distinctiveness. Two errors that
appear in the history of the consideration of the doctrine are
tritheism and unitarianism. In tritheism error is made in
emphasizing the distinctiveness of the Godhead to the point
that the Trinity is seen as three separate Gods, or a
Christian polytheism. On the other hand, unitarianism excludes
the concept of distinctiveness while focusing solely on the
aspect of God the Father. [Brand, C., Draper, C., England, A.,
Bond, S., Clendenen, E. R., Butler, T. C., & Latta, B.
(2003). Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (1625–1627).
Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.]
The Muslim
affirms that describing God as ‘a being’ does NOT ‘liken Him
to His creation’, because His type of existence is unique
(cf. “And the first consequence of this discovery is that God
cannot be regarded as an existent among other existents. In
the metaphysical realm, there can be no democratic and equal
sharing of being between the Original, the Creator, the
Self-Necessary, and the borrowed, the created, the contingent;
such a "sharing" rather exists within the second category
itself. [WR:MTOTQ2 , 4]). So too the Christian:
“He is
not a being alongside other beings but the
infinite being who is himself the source and ground of all
finite beings.” [Bloesch, D. G. (2006). God, the Almighty :
Power, wisdom, holiness, love (34). Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity Press.]
“The
unity of God is unique. It is the only unity of the kind.
An individual man is one; and any individual creature or thing
is one. But there are others like it, each of which is
likewise numerically one. God
is not merely one, but the only one; not merely
unus
(one), but unicus
(unique). He is not one of a species or one in contrast with
another of the same kind. God is one God and the only God. The
notion of the unique must be associated with that of unity in
the instance of the Supreme Being. [Shedd, W. G. T., &
Gomes, A. W. (2003). Dogmatic theology (3rd ed.) (222).
Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R Pub.]
“Biblical
faith,
by contrast, does not shrink from viewing God as an
existent being (Heb 11:6),
though he exists not in the way the creature exists—as
dependent and contingent—but as independent and
unconditioned. He exists by his own power and
is the cause of his own being (meaning that the mystery of his
being resides in himself, not that he must create his own
being). Having no need of any other power or reality, he is
the uncaused ground and source of all finite being.” [Bloesch,
D. G. (2006). God, the Almighty : Power, wisdom, holiness,
love (39). Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.]
The Muslim
confesses that the attributes of God are distinct—yet united
with—God’s nature. So too the Christian:
“In
scholastic theology (both Catholic and Protestant) a
distinction is generally made between God’s essence and
God’s attributes, the former referring to the abiding or
core feature of God’s being and nature. Yet these
theologians were also emphatic that there can be no hard
and fast lines between divine essence and the divine
attributes, since the latter are simply the expression or
manifestation of the former. In summarizing the
Reformed position Heinrich Heppe contends that “the
divine attributes are not something different from the
nature and existence of God, so that the latter may be
thought of as distinct from the former… Rather the
attributes of God are the divine nature itself in its
relation to the world.” Indeed, “No
elements in God are distinguished essentially. All the
things in God are one indivisible and most single essence.”
[Bloesch, D. G. (2006). God, the Almighty : Power, wisdom,
holiness, love (40–41). Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity
Press.]
The Muslim
affirms that the attributes of God—like His Names—display
the One God in His many ways of manifesting His glory. So
too the Christian:
“If
we continue to speak of essence and attributes, we must
insist that the essence of God is reflected in his
attributes; the attributes, on the other hand, are
manifestations of his essence. The God of the Bible is not
monochrome. He radiates his splendor in myriad ways.”
[Bloesch, D. G. (2006). God, the Almighty: Power, wisdom,
holiness, love (40–41). Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity
Press.]
The Muslim can
discuss the essence/attributes problem, and attempt a
‘solution’, but in the end they will admit that it is eludes
human understanding. So too the Christian:
“While
the theologians of the church were willing to make the
attempt to define the Trinity, they were unanimous in
acknowledging the Trinity as a mystery that eludes
rational comprehension. The Trinity can be
stated in paradoxical and symbolic language, but it cannot be
resolved into a rational system. It reminds us that the
mysteries of faith stand above reason though not necessarily
against reason. … Reason
cannot penetrate these mysteries, but it can respect them
and try to make them intelligible.” [Bloesch,
D. G. (2006). God, the Almighty : Power, wisdom, holiness,
love (167). Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.]
Muslim
theologians sometimes took one of the two sides of the
essence-attributes problem as being the ‘correct one’, and
erred in denying the ‘other side’. So too have Christian
theologians erred in this way:
“As in
all theology, we are on a knife edge, or, we might say, a
narrow path with precipices on each side. On one side, we
deny the unity of God, and make it appear that there are
three gods; on the other, we cause the distinctions of the
three to disappear into some underlying undifferentiated
deity. On the whole, our Western tradition has
tended to the latter, so to stress the unity of God’s action
that it becomes difficult to do justice to its diversity. ”
[Gunton, C. E. (2003). Father, Son, and Holy Spirit : Essays
toward a fully trinitarian theology (79). London; New York: T
& T Clark.]
Muslim
theologians affirmed that human language was inadequate to
describe God, but also that God had used this language to
describe Himself (or His will). They affirmed that the
language terms DID apply to God, but not in the way those
words applied to creatures (cf. “Thus no
human language, necessarily making use of created concepts and
words, can validly speak of God. However, God himself has
spoken to mankind, using their language, in the Qur'an
revealed 'in completely clear Arabic'”. [WR:HIIT, 202f]). So too did Christian
theology affirm that terms used in common with God and
creatures applied to each in their own distinctive ways
(i.e. modus
significandi varies with modus
essendi):
“Since
the attributes were expressed by terms also applicable to
human beings, care was taken to maintain the otherness of God
from everything human. Early discussions had been about
whether the terms were to be understood literally or
metaphorically, with the latter word taken in a somewhat rigid
sense. It was probably Ahmad ibn Hanbal who tried to break the
deadlock by saying they were to be taken bi-ld kayf, 'without
(asking) how'. In the translations, the term 'amodally' has
been coined for this important conception. This
is in line with the recognition by Christian thinkers that
human language never applies precisely to God, and that he
is only 'something like' what we call Him. [WR:ICAS,
15f]
“Thomas
Aquinas [Catholic theologian] was inclined not only to limit
God’s acts to what is not incompatible with his being but also
to limit them as to what does not contradict logical
coherence. Yet Thomas also denied univocal predication for God
and insisted that even
in analogical predication what we do not know exceeds by
far what we are able to glean even from the resources of
faith and tradition.” [Bloesch, D. G. (2006).
God, the Almighty : Power, wisdom, holiness, love (34–35).
Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.]
But there seems to be one very fundamental
difference still…
However, in probing the mystery of God’s nature
and of His revelation to His creatures, Islam seems to have
gone further toward agnosticism than Christianity did. By
emphasizing the ‘alien-ness’ of the uniqueness of God so
strongly, they muted the Divine voice in His revelation.
Indeed, mainstream Islamic theology arrived at the conclusion
that God
did NOT reveal Himself at all—only His law and/or His
will.
Creatures were only required to state
(actually only ‘recite’ the sounds) that God was ‘merciful’
(whatever ‘merciful’ meant—and only God knew the content of
that word), but were
not allowed to believe that this Name was a true
description of God’s character. God did not
reveal that He was truly merciful in
His nature—but rather that creatures were
required to believe something like that anyway.
For example, in addressing the question as to
whether God’s will is an expression of His nature, modern
Muslim apologist al-Faruqu can write:
“The will
of God is God in percipe—the
nature of God in so far as I can know anything about Him.
This is God’s will and that is all we have—and we have it in
perfection in the Qur’an. But Islam does not equate the Qur’an
with the nature or essence of God. It is the Word of God, the
Commandment of God, the Will of God. But God does not reveal
Himself to anyone. Christians talk about the revelation
of God Himself—by God of God—but that is the great
difference between Christianity and Islam.
God is transcendent, and once you talk about self-revelation
you have hierophancy and immanence, and then the transcendence
of God is compromised. You
may not have complete transcendence and self-revelation at
the same time.” [
Isma‘il Al-Faruqi, “On the Nature of Islamic Da‘wah,”
International Review of Missions 65 (1976): 405-6; cited in
The Predicament of Islamic Monotheism , Imad N. Shehadeh. Bibliotheca
Sacra Volume 161. 2004 (642) (161–162). Dallas,
TX: Dallas Theological Seminary.]
This is a consequence of Muslim views of
theological/revelatory language:
“This
is also called tanzih, "removing",
that is removing Allah from any danger of confusion or
association with his creatures. In
general, this process stopped at a point where it was still
possible to form a conception of Allah. He was different,
it was conceded; but still, Allah must be thinkable, and these
names and phrases gave a thought of him not essentially
wrong; we could not get from them what he was, but
something like what he was. Others, however, went further
and argued that from these expressions we could gain no
conception of Allah's real nature. That nature
must always be a mystery to us, and we need not think that
even the Names gave any light. The Kur'an calls Allah "the
Most Merciful of them that show mercy" (vii. 151; xii. 64, 92;
xxi. 83); but
that cannot mean for us that he has the human quality of
mercy, of or anything in any way similar. The
course of things in the world disproves that. He has only
given himself that Name, and what the Name means we cannot
know and should not enquire. The great division here lies in
admitting or rejecting the possibility of any discovering
of the nature of Allah other than purely negative — he is not
this, he is not that. [WR:SEI, s.v. “Allah”,
37f]
“Classical
Muslim theology developed a form of compromise solution in
effect inclining to the negative answer. There developed the
idea of Al-Mukhdlafah, "the difference." Terms taken from
human meanings—and there are of course no others—were said to
be used of God with a difference. They
did not convey the human connotation but were used in
those senses feasible of God. When the further
question was pressed: What, then, do they convey as
applied to God? no precise answer could be formulated. Islam here falls back upon
a final agnosticism. Terms must be
used if there is to be religion at all. But only God knows
what they signify. Muslim theology coined the related phrases
Bila
kaif and Bila
Tashbih. We use these names
"without knowing how" they apply and without implying any
human similarity. … In a real sense the Muslim awareness of
God is an awareness of the unknown. Revelation communicated God's law. It does not
reveal God, who remains inscrutable
and inaccessible to knowledge. Sometimes described as the
negative theology, this conviction that only God knows the sense of
the terms in which we speak of God has
characterized Muslim attitudes far beyond the range of those
who can understand its intellectual grounds. If some readers
find the point under discussion abstruse, they can be
assured that it attaches to the Muslim sense of God in
everyday life. Only God knows. The problem of meaning in
language belongs with all religions and is not unique to
Islam. It can be solved only within the conviction that the
divine and the human are truly meaningful to each other, only
in the confidence that the relationships God has with
us are really indicative of the divine nature.
Christians only put these convictions more shortly—and
sublimely—when they say: "God is Love." Islam has never felt
able to say that. The pressure of these problems [i.e. trying
to maintain God’s unity while asserting the reality of His
attributes] is the measure of its reluctance.” [WR:Cragg, 48f]
But this view of language—even that of the Quran
for the Muslim—leaves the Muslim theologian with the emptiness
of equivocal language:
“The
inability to know anything about God’s nature is made very
clear in the words of Ahmed
Deedat, a contemporary Islamic apologist. He said, “God is
not like anything you can think or imagine. Anything you
think or imagine is not Him.” Zwemer sums it up
well when he said, “Islam is proud to write on its banner, the
Unity of God; but it is, after all, a banner to the Unknown
God.” … Unfortunately, this rigid adherence to the absolute
unity and singularity in God’s essence naturally leads to an
agnostic position which is, at best, untenable, and at worst,
self-defeating;
for
to claim that something is unknowable requires one to know
enough about it to declare it unknowable. The
Muslim is stuck in his view that the only possible way to talk
about God is equivocally (totally different from the way God
is) and this leads him to a total ignorance about God.
[“God
And Allah: Are They The Same?, Kevin Staley”, Christian
Apologetics Journal Volume 3. 2004 (1) (68–69). Matthews, NC:
Southern Evangelical Seminary.
The Muslim theologian asserts that God gives very
practical revelation in Scripture—but it still
leaves the Revealer veiled:
“Surrender
implies the revelation of the will to which obedience is
rendered. The Quranic account of the relation between God and
humankind hinges upon the fact of revelation. The Holy Book is
the climax of a long sequence of volumes of revelation with
which it is continuous, granted to a long succession of
prophets of whom Adam was the first and Muhammad the last.
Belief in God, therefore, for the Muslim involves also belief
in God's prophets, angels, and books. For these are the
agencies of God's making known the divine law to humankind.
Revelation is conceived of, not as a communication of the
divine Being, but only of the divine will. It is a
revelation, that is, of law, not of personality. God the
Revealer remains unrevealed. The Qur'an is a
guide for the world. It brings that which humans need to know
in order to relate themselves to God as servants. … Revelation
is not a personal self-disclosure of the divine.
It is for this reason, apart from its fear also of
compromising unity, that the Qur'an does not use the term
"Father" in relation to God, or children in relation to
believers. It allows only Rabb
and 'abd. In
either case, the terms require each other. If God is not
addressed as Father, neither is it as children that Muslims
come to God. [tanknote:
but Cragg points out elsewhere that one of the divine names is
Al-Wali, sometimes translated as Friend or Patron, p.37] There
remains beyond the revelation the impenetrable mystery of
the divine. Revelation tells how God wills that humanity
should live. It has a practical intent. It is true that
intellectual curiosity has apprehended the Qur'an in many more
senses than the practical. Revelation, too, whatever its
intent, is necessarily involved in implications beyond
law…. Nonetheless it remains broadly true that the
substance of what God reveals is the divine will rather
than the divine nature, and that the end of
revelation is obedience rather than perfect knowledge.
God sends rather than comes. The God who makes plain remains
above.” [WR:Cragg, 41f]
……………………………………. ………………………………
Strictly speaking, much of what the Muslim
theologians affirm can be understood as being similar to
Christian understandings on this:
·
God
does not reveal His ‘essence’ if we mean by that ‘the stuff He
is made of’.
·
We
do not know anything about God ‘exhaustively’ or ‘perfectly’.
·
God
reveals what He wants (wills/desires) us to profess about
Himself and His creation.
·
There
are limitations in our use of human language—even Scriptural
language—since the descriptions of God are not univocal.
But where the Christian can agree with these
statements, there are important qualifications to them that
not all Muslim theologians could accept:
·
“God
does not reveal His ‘essence’ if we mean by that ‘the stuff He
is made of’”-- But
God’s character is ‘inside’ His essence and God does
reveal His character to us.
·
“We
do not know anything about God ‘exhaustively’ or ‘perfectly’”—But
we still know truly, just like we can know other people
truly-not-exhaustively.
·
“God
reveals what He wants (wills/desires) us to profess about
Himself and His creation”—But
God wants us to KNOW (not just ‘profess’) His beautiful
character and His power for redemptive and sustaining
works;
·
“There
are limitations in our use of human language—even Scriptural
language—since the descriptions of God are not univocal”—But
God has designed language and creation to allow language
to be analogical, and not equivocal (if all
language in revelation was equivocal, btw, this would destroy
the Muslim claim that God revealed His will—for there would be
no cognitive content to His commands).
God is powerful enough to reveal ANYTHING to
us—even His essence, if He wanted to. If it be objected that
we are too finite/human/limited to receive such transcendent
truth/knowledge, this statement would directly contradict
modern Muslim theology (e.g. God is not limited to the
possible or to the non-contradictory).
The Christian does not need to know the
‘whatness’ (essence) of God. It is more than sufficient to see
His loving-but-just heart displayed in history and at the
Cross, His unfathomable power in creation and
redemption—displayed at the Empty Tomb of the resurrected
Jesus, and His faithfulness to His self-revelation (e.g. He
keeps His promises, and He is the paradigm of morality for His
creations).
The Problems are the same—so why the slander?
In the opening centuries of the birth/rise/height
of Islam, the Muslim theologians were wrestling with these
issues and were very cognizant of the similarity of these
issues with Christian theological thought. These Muslim
thinkers interacted with their Christian counterparts with
fairness and civility, even though they generally out-argued
their Christian opponents in most cases (largely because the
Christians did not understand the Muslim position well enough
before arguing…typical…sounds like me too…sigh… see [WR:CDIIT]
and [WR:IIOC, chapter 4 for discussion of how the Christian
arguments failed).
“The
arguments used against the doctrine [of the Trinity] by
these and other Muslims reflect a sense of
incomprehensibility. … Abu 'Isa demonstrates at
great length whatever way the doctrine is expressed, the
attempt to identify three
entities with one leads to confusion and incoherence.
The fundamental problem which each polemicist differently
raises is that since in any description of the doctrine more
than one divine entity is listed, some form of plurality is
entailed and the simple unity is obliterated. So the insistent
claim made by the Christians that God is one becomes
meaningless. … Yet
this problem of unity and multiplicity was not peculiar
to Christianity in the period we are discussing. Within
Islamic thinking itself, the problem of how
systematically to set down the teachings of the Qur'an
about God produced difficulties that, to many minds,
itself affected the strict oneness of God's being in a
way that parallels the issues concerned with the
Trinity. … The matter of the divine
attributes is very old in Islam. Some scholars think that it
may, in fact, have been raised through discussions with
Christians. It arises from the problem of how to categorise
the descriptions of God given by revelation and reason,
whether these refer accurately to God's actual being or are
human approximations of an unknowable divinity. …But this was
the nub of the problem. According to the generally agreed
perception at this time, the descriptions that could
pertinently be made of a being were understood to refer to
attributes that qualified the being itself. For example, if a
being could be called living it was qualified by the attribute
of life, and if it could be called seeing it was qualified by
the attribute of sight. The attribute itself qualified the
being as a whole, and in that respect was said to be of or in
the being. This relationship between description and attribute
was expressed according to the grammatical logic which was
generally accepted at this time by paraphrasing a statement
such as "he is living” as “he
has life," the two statements being regarded as equivalent.
Thus, within the structure of this thinking to describe a
being in any way was the same as saying that the being
possessed attributes which were real and in some way
additional to the being in its own actuality. … In applying
these ideas to God, obvious problems arose. For
if he possessed attributes which were both real and
distinct from his being, he could not be the dense unity
upon which the Mu'tazills insisted…. The other
side of the debate was equally problematic, since those who
maintained the reality of the attributes were confronted with the
difficulty of explaining how God was one in any
meaningful sense. … But the resulting
problem is that since the attributes are not identical with
God's essence but rather of it Ibn Kullab cannot easily
explain how the being of God is a simple unity.” [WR:IIOC,
86-88]
Muslim theologians up until the modern age
recognized that the Christian ‘version’ of
multiplicity-in-unity (i.e. the Trinity) was technically a
‘full’ monotheism:
“Recall
the crisply formulated conclusion that Nicholas of Cusa [an
ancient Christian teacher and church leader of the 15th
century] reached after examining Muslim and Jewish critiques
of the doctrine of the Trinity: "In the manner in which
Arabs [Muslims] and Jews deny the Trinity, assuredly
it ought to be denied by all.” The Christian
creeds and the great Christian teachers reject dividing the
divine essence no less adamantly than do Muslims and Jews. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a preeminent contemporary
Muslim scholar, agrees: "The doctrine of the Trinity
certainly does not negate Divine Unity in mainstream
Christian theology." [Seyyed Hossein
Nasr, “We and You: Let Us Meet in God’s Love,” a lecture
delivered at the ‘Common Word’ meeting with Pope Benedict XVI,
November 6, 2008. P2; cited in WR:AACR,135f]
“Certain earlier authors,
such as Ghazali and
especially
modern Muslim theologians in dialogue with Christian
theologians, can go as far as to recognise that, if one
considers the precise statement of Christian doctrine,
Christianity is an authentic monotheism.
But they would certainly add that it is in form different from
the Islamic monotheism…” [WR:HIIT, 80,81]
“From
the Muslim perspective, the
relatively crude perception of the Christian Trinity as
three gods has gradually been replaced by a
deeper appreciation of the complexities of the Christian
understanding of three distinct persons in one essence. [WR:HTRQ,
28-31]
But more modern Muslim writers sometimes seem to
be unaware of this, and seem to construct caricatures of the
Christian belief—unlike their medieval Muslim counterparts:
“The
most outspoken critics of Christianity are not always the best
ambassadors for Islam. … Al-Faruqi's
treatment of some of the traditional areas of tension in
Islam, such as the relationship between God's
grace and human deeds, between God's justice and His mercy, or
between God's determining of history and human free will, is
superficial and somewhat dismissive of the rich legacy of
Islamic thought in these areas. …The study
of Christianity by modern Muslims does not, on the whole,
compare favourably with that of the medieval Muslim
scholars. The intellectual tools derived from
Aristotelian philosophy have been exchanged for those of
modern Western critical scholarship, which, whatever their
intrinsic merits, are applied in a far less sustained and
rigorous way.
These Muslims show less awareness than did the medieval
scholars that some of the philosophical problems arising
in Christian theology, concerning, for example, the
Incarnation and the Trinity, have their counterparts in
Islam in the areas of the attributes of God,
the eternality and Uncreatedness of the Qur'an, and the need
to reconcile the fact of God's absolute transcendence with His
communication with humankind." [WR:MACF2F, 172f]
“The
“mathematics” of the Trinity seems to baffle Muslims! How can
1+1+1=1? This point is illustrated by reviewing the words of
Mish’al ibn Abdullah, a Muslim author. Abdullah defines the
Trinity as: “the
merging of three entities into one similar entity while
remaining three distinct entities. In other words: Three
bodies fold, blend, or merge into one body so that they become
one entity while at the same time exhibiting the
characteristics of three distinct and separate entities. “ He
then goes on to give a caricature of the way the Trinity
inter-relates by wondering how “one” can be “three.” … Abdullah
is a reflection of the manner in which Muslims approach
the Trinity. From his writings it becomes very apparent
that he does not comprehend what Christians mean by the
Trinity. In a
way, Christians can relate, for to them the doctrine of
the Trinity is very much a mystery and beyond our
comprehension. However, it is also a truth revealed by God
and a reasonable doctrine. [“Explaining the
Trinity to a Muslim”, Daniel Janosik, Christian Apologetics
Journal Volume 4. 2005 (2) (71–74). Matthews, NC: Southern
Evangelical Seminary.]
Even a modern commentator can brand Christian
theology as illogical and full of contradiction—while
seemingly unaware (?) that Muslim theology has historically
‘owned’ the same problems but not addressed them successfully
either…
“The
Church, on the other hand, adheres to beliefs and doctrines
that are paradoxical
and totally self-contradictory. Jesus is God,
and Mary is the mother of God. But God is the Eternal Father,
who sent His son, Jesus, to save the human race, and Jesus is
therefore the son of God. However, there is also the Holy
Spirit who is also God. So, although there are three Gods,
they are in fact one God, or rather God is three-in-one, a
Trinity, and so on. …The great religious debate in the world
today is in essence between Islam, which upholds the absolute
oneness of God, the one and only creator and controller of the
whole of life and the universe, on the one hand, and a
brand of Christianity with illogical, inconsistent,
and incomprehensible doctrines that are being
modified and remodified by self-serving institutions, on the
other.” [WR:TCQ,110f]
Muslim
theologians and philosophers worked very hard to avoid
admitting that there were some kinds of distinctions within
God, putting forth theoretical terms like “modes” and
“states”, internal and external attributes, attributes of
essence and attributes of description, and so on. But no
real solution ever appeared.
The God who is all-knowing and compassionate and creative—and
Who speaks into history(!)-- simply cannot be some kind of
featureless, homogenous, unknowable and undifferentiated
substance—without attributes or characteristics or internal
relations. We must submit to God’s revelation, not our
philosophical or theological commitments. Let God be God! Let
God speak His word and let us listen!
What God has told us in Scripture about His
nature and His life, is to be accepted and trusted as honest
and accurate statements from Him. He never tells us about how
His nature could be such, and it is presumptuous, foolish,
fruitless, distracting, and dangerous for us to speculate on
this.
There is not a whisper in the Bible, the Quran,
or the Hadith about God being some kind of featureless,
homogenous, unknowable and undifferentiated
substance/something—without internal attributes or
characteristics or internal relations. It is only the
philosophers, theologians, and polemicists that say such about
our glorious and grand God.
Sura
112 is sometimes put forward as being a pure statement of
God’s ‘singularity’, but Muslim exegetes go “way beyond what
is written” in their exposition of this text.
The Sura simply says this:
Say: “He is
Allah, the only One (ahad),
“Allah, the
Everlasting (samad).
“He did not
beget and is not begotten,
“And none is
His equal.”
“THE OPENING
VERSES of this very short sura encapsulate
the central tenet of Islam: the oneness of God (tawhid).
Alongside the final two suras (Q. 113 and Q. 114)
and the Fatiha, the surat al-Ikhlds is one of the most
well-known passages of the Qur'an; it is familiar to almost
every self-professing Muslim, and even those with a minimal
familiarity with the Qur'an would still be able to recite its
opening verses. This declaration of God's oneness can be found
on some of the earliest Islamic materials:
first-/seventh-century Islamic coins. This is earlier than the
oldest extant copies of the Qur'an. Despite the sura
consisting of four verses and being one of the shortest
passages of the Qur'an, Muslim commentaries have appended to
it lengthy exegetical narratives. This is mainly due to it
being considered by Muslims to be emblematic of the Muslim
faith and its fundamental doctrine: the absolute oneness of
God. For the authors of these commentaries, this sura also
serves to distinguish between Islamic monotheism and other
forms of monotheism. The Abrahamic traditions are acknowledged
by all Muslims as sister-religions whose geo-historical and
spiritual continuity with Islam is obvious; but
the qualification of the nature of 'God' and how this
'God' is to be conceived of, or not, has always been a
sensitive issue, both within Muslim scholarship
and in inter-confessional dialogue between the three
faiths. What is interesting about the
commentaries on this sura is their discussions on the idea of
'uniqueness' or 'singularity' as these relate to the Arabic
term ahad:
God is One because He is unique, bearing no relation -
physical or otherwise - to creation nor any similarity with
which comparisons may be made of Him; He transcends all
comparisons and all similes such that, in the words of Fadl
Allah, "The mental faculty cannot reach Him in His elusive and
hidden mystery.' [WR:AAQC1,
491f]
I find it curious that, for a verse that is to
encapsulate the central tenet of Islam, the main word tawhid
is not mentioned in the verse—even though early reciters
apparently ‘smuggled it in’ without textual warrant and
without fear of changing (tahrif)
the wording of their Quran:
“In
the commentaries an important distinction is made between al-ahad
and al-wahid,
even
though the latter term is not used in the canonical text
itself — although Hud has a citation that Ibn
Mas'ud used to recite the verse using al-wahid
instead of al-ahad,
and Razi cites the same about al-A'mash. Both
names denote oneness and unicity and singleness. Literally, al-ahad
denotes an 'internal oneness', while al-wahid
denotes an 'external oneness'; in other words, God is
indivisibly One within Himself and He is exclusively one of a
kind, respectively. While
the name al-ahad
is used in the first verse of the sura (in the standard
text) to state the indivisibility of the divine oneness, the
incomparability of God is stated in the last verse of the
sura. [WR:AAQC1, 491f]
Notice how much content a learned commentator can
“find” in the single word ahad:
“In
Mecca the Quraysh had said to the Prophet, 'Describe your Lord
for us that we might know Him and thus worship Him.' God,
blessed and exalted, then sent down to the Prophet, Say:
He is God, One, meaning [that He is] neither
divisible (muba'ad) nor subject to partition (mujazza') or
modality (mukayyaf), nor can the notion of numbers (ism
al-'adad) or increase (ziydda) or decrease (nuqsan) be applied
to Him. … Nor is
there anyone equal to Him, meaning that He has no resemblance,
no likeness and no equivalent and none of His creatures is
able, with whatever blessings He has bestowed upon them from
His bounty, to match Him.” (tradition cited by Qummi [4th
century], in [WR:AAQC1, 501]
But this more-theology-than-exegesis commentary
leaves God very far out of the reach of worshippers and
recipients of revelation. If one compares that fairly
‘sterile’ description of God, with this beautiful one by ‘Ali
(WR:MTHQ):
“The
nature of Allah is here indicated to us in a few words, such
as we can understand…The first thing we have to note is that
His nature is so sublime, so far beyond our limited
conceptions, that
the best way in which we can realize Him is to feel that
He is a Personality, ‘He’, and not a mere abstract
conception of philosophy, He
is near us; He cares for us; we owe our
existence to Him. Secondly, He is the One and Only God, the
Only One to Whom worship is due; all other things or beings
that we can think of are His creatures and in no way
comparable to Him. Thirdly, He is Eternal, without beginning
or end, Absolute, not limited by time or space or
circumstance, the Reality before which all other things or
places are mere shadows or reflections. Fourthly, we must not
think of Him as having a son or a father, for that would be to
import animal qualities into our conception of Him. Fifthly,
He is not like any other person or thing that we know or can
imagine: His qualities and nature are unique.”
God is a “Personality” who “cares” for us… can
you imagine what the tanzih-purists
would do to this?!
Conclusion
Debates about the internal workings of our great
God have sabotaged many beautiful lives and created
significant discord in both Christian and Muslim theology.
In Christian theology, the debates about this in
the early centuries of the church were often impure—they were
tainted by political ambitions and by social pressures.
Sometimes they stopped arguing and admitted the reality of
mystery, but sometimes they did not.
And the same is true for the internal Muslim
debates. One writer (Nader El-Bizri), discussing the internal
Muslim arguments over essence and attributes, said this:
“Although
the
question
concerning God's essence and attributes has
primarily remained a classical madrasa problem that
has been peripheral to modem reformist deliberations, it
nevertheless confronts
us with exacting metaphysical riddles. Attempts
to advance a definite thesis in this regard are likely to be
part of a call for a conversion to one doctrine or another.
The atmosphere is one of ideological indoctrination
preoccupied with historicity rather than a
commitment to the uncanny realities of this question.
This
should, as a minimum, be replaced with a
restraint in taking conclusive positions, and by resisting
intellective haste, given that the doctrinal unfolding of
this question did not always maintain, with
purity, the indeterminacy, indecision, openness and
submission that befit a genuine experience of the holy.”
[WR:CCCIT,
137f,
Nader El-Bizri, “God: essence and attributes”]
This overview of the history of internal Muslim
theological debate about the mystery
of the relationship between essence and attributes
suggests that criticism/dismissal of Christian statements
about the
mystery of the Trinity should be based on
something OTHER THAN perceived logical contradictions,
inconsistencies, and statements about realities ‘of which we
do not know the how thereof’.
Debate about Christian claims should rather be
focused on the content of revelation—not extreme
extrapolations of logic or language… No historical monotheism
is exempt from this problem of how ANY Absolute can be
personal, related to creatures in time, and self-aware…
[Just a reminder: this is basically an appendix
to the article on the Trinity: “Are there 3 Gods in One God,
in the Trinity?”—howtrin.html. It
is not a stand-alone document per
se.]
Glenn Miller, Feb 2012