Abstract
Al-Ghazali (1058–1111) was concerned that early Islamic philosophers were leaning too heavily and uncritically on Aristotelian and Neoplatonic ideas in developing their models of God and his relation to the world. He argued that their views were not only irreligious, but philosophically problematic, and he defended an alternative view aimed at staying closer to the Qur’an and the beliefs of the ordinary Muslim. Ibn Rushd (1126–1198) responded to al-Ghazali’s critique and developed a sophisticated Aristotelian view. The present chapter explores their views in light of a problem facing any philosophical model of God in Islam or classical theism more generally, the problem of conceiving of God’s nature and relation to the world in a way that places an appropriate distance between God and humans. On the one hand, we want a notion of God that is not overly anthropomorphic, or that does not make him to be too much like us. On the other hand, we want to be able to say something positive and substantive about God. And we want to do this while preserving the harmony of reason and revelation, of philosophy and religion, as much as possible.
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Notes
- 1.
Passages from the Qur’an are taken from the Arberry (1964) version, with the sura number followed by the verse number.
- 2.
See Craig 1979 for a detailed discussion of the Kalaam Cosmological Argument.
- 3.
See Ibn Rushd 1961, 16. The Qur’an mentions that God “created the heavens and the earth in six days, and His throne was upon the waters” (11, 7) but this does not imply that everything was created from nothing. Indeed, it suggests that time and God’s throne were already in existence. The Qur’an also says that God “lifted himself up to heaven, when it was smoke…so he determined them as seven heavens” (41, 10), implying that heaven was made by giving form to some pre-existing matter.
- 4.
As we shall see, however, al-Ghazali denies that we have genuine free will. He could be understood as claiming that our concept of will or agency, of what genuine agency would be for us if we had it, is not different from what it is for God, except that His will has a much greater scope by virtue of his omnipotence and omniscience.
- 5.
See, for example, Ibn Rushd 1954, 88; 213; 222–3; and 269.
- 6.
God knows the weight of every atom (34, 3) and knows our thoughts (50, 1).
- 7.
This Aristotelian view of possibility is at odds with common sense, and difficult to motivate. One motivation is that it might seem strange to suppose that humans have some ability that they would never exercise, not even given infinite time. Perhaps the underlying idea is that there is no ability or potentiality in nature without some purpose, and the existence of an ability or potentiality that never was and never will be actualized would be without a purpose.
- 8.
- 9.
See Griffel 2009, 225–234 for an interpretation along the following lines.
- 10.
See Leaman 1998, 82–116 for a defense of this interpretation.
- 11.
- 12.
See the passage from al-Ghazali’s Persian letter, in Treiger 2007. As Trieger notes, al-Ghazali’s idea that other things “borrow” their existence from God seems to be inspired by Ibn Sina, though the latter would deny that the existence that is borrowed is purely metaphorical.
- 13.
Indeed, al-Ghazali’s cosmology is an elaborate fusion of philosophical and Qur’anic language. See Griffel 2009, 256–7.
References
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Hasan, A. (2013). Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) on Creation and the Divine Attributes. In: Diller, J., Kasher, A. (eds) Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_13
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