Arguments for The Existence of God

Clas­si­cal Islam­ic Argu­ments for the Exis­tence of God

After Wensinck’s bril­liant studyLes preuves de l’existence de Dieu dans la Théolo­gie Musul­mane, in Med­edeelin­gen der Konink. Akademie van Weten­schap­pen, Deel 81, Serie A, No. 2, Ams­ter­dam, 1936., a fresh exam­i­na­tion of the argu­ment for the exis­tence of God in Islam might appear imper­ti­nent. Some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the present dis­cus­sion, how­ev­er, may be found in the fact that some of the mate­r­i­al on which this study is based was not avail­able to Wensinck, when his mono­graph appeared in 1936, and in the slight­ly dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tion of cer­tain rel­e­vant data here attempted.

The sys­tem­at­ic exam­i­na­tion of the proofs of the exis­tence of God should be pre­ced­ed by a legit­i­mate enquiry : Is the demon­stra­tion of God’s exis­tence pos­si­ble at all ? In the Latin scholas­tic trea­tis­es of the Mid­dle Ages, as for exam­ple in the Sum­ma The­o­log­i­ca of St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) this enquiry fig­ures as the pre­lude to the demon­stra­tion of God’s exis­tence prop­er. Although Wensinck has dis­cussed some aspects of the prob­lem of knowl­edge (erken­nt­nislehre) in his cel­e­brat­ed Mus­lim CreedCam­bridge, 1937, pp. 249f., he does not touch upon this par­tic­u­lar aspect of the prob­lem in his mono­graph, except inci­den­tal­ly, as, for exam­ple, in con­nec­tion with Al-Ghazali’s atti­tude to the ques­tion of God’s exis­tence.Ibid., p. 8 and again p. 9 But this ques­tion, it would seem, requires a fuller treat­ment than is accord­ed it in that parenthesis.

In his two lit­tle tracts ; Fasl al-Maqal and al-Kashf an Man­ahij al-Adil­lah, Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) rais­es this ques­tion in a sys­tem­at­ic way. In the for­mer tract, he is con­cerned with a wider prob­lem : viz. Whether the philo­soph­i­cal method tal­lies with the teach­ing of rev­e­la­tion or not –- to which he replies in the affir­ma­tive. For if the aim of phi­los­o­phy,” he writes, is noth­ing oth­er than the con­sid­er­a­tion of exist­ing things and their exam­i­na­tion, in so far as they man­i­fest the Cre­ator — viz. in so far as they cre­at­ed objects…revelation (al-shar’) def­i­nite­ly enjoins the con­sid­er­a­tion of exist­ing things and com­mends it“Cf. op. cit., Cairo, 1935, p. 9 -– a the­sis which he sup­ports by a wealth of Qur’an­ic quo­ta­tions. When he returns to this ques­tion at the begin­ning of Al-Khasf, he dis­tin­guish­es between three schools of thought on the spe­cif­ic prob­lem of God’s existence :

(1) The Lit­er­al­ist who reject ratio­nal argu­ment alto­geth­erFasl, p. 11 and claim that God’s exis­tence can be known by means of author­i­ty (al-sam‘) only.Kashf, p. 42

(2) The Ash‘arites (with whom he includes the Mu‘tazilites) who admit the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a ratio­nal demon­stra­tion of the exis­tence of God from the con­cepts of tem­po­ral­i­ty (huduth) or con­tin­gency (jawaz), as we will see lat­er and ;

(3) final­ly the Sufis who claim that we appre­hend God direct­ly but whose method,” as Ibn Rushd observes, is not spec­u­la­tive at all” and which, even if its valid­i­ty is con­ced­ed, is not com­mon to all men.Ibid., p. 63

The ear­li­est sys­tem­at­ic dis­cus­sion of the prob­lem of knowl­edge (erken­nt­nis) as a pre­lude to the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sions which has come down to us is found in Al-Baghdadi’s (d. 1037) Usul al-Din.Stam­bul Ed., 1928, pp. 4 – 32 It is pos­si­ble that Al-Bagh­da­di con­tin­ues a more ancient tra­di­tion, ini­ti­at­ed by the Mu‘tazilite doc­tors of the 9th cen­tu­ry, as their pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with such abstract ques­tions as notions (ma‘ani), sci­ence (ilm), etc. sug­gests.Cf. Maqalat, Stam­bul, 1930, pp. 372 – 3, 391 f., 471f. But it is sig­nif­i­cant that al-Baqi­lani (d. 1013), who is cred­it­ed by some ancient author­i­ties with hav­ing refined the meth­ods of Kalam, does not dwell on this ques­tion at any length in the open­ing chap­ter of his Tamhid.

The intro­duc­to­ry chap­ter of Usul, to which Wensinck has drawn atten­tion and dis­cussed in some length in The Mus­lim Creed, is thus of con­sid­er­able impor­tance for the under­stand­ing of the Islam­ic approach to the ques­tion of knowl­edge or science.

We can­not dwell at length here on Baghdadi’s analy­sis of the divi­sions of knowl­edge (ilm), its pre­sup­po­si­tions, the con­di­tions of its valid­i­ty, etc. which are gen­uine­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Kant and the sub­se­quent schools of mod­ern epis­te­mol­o­gy. On the par­tic­u­lar issue with which we are here con­cerned, it should be not­ed that Al-Bagh­da­di defines demon­stra­tive knowl­edge by means of rea­son” and instances the knowl­edge of the tem­po­ral­ly of the world, the eter­ni­ty of its Mak­er, his uni­ty, his attrib­ut­es, his jus­tice, his wis­dom and the pos­si­bil­i­ty (jawaz) of reli­gious oblig­a­tions (tak­lif),“Cf. op. cit., p. 14, etc.

In fur­ther expound­ing the objects of knowl­edge, as dis­tinct from the objects of rev­e­la­tion (al-shar‘), he states that the Ash‘arites (ashabuna) hold that rea­son is capa­ble of prov­ing the tem­po­ral­i­ty of the world and the uni­ty of its Mak­er, etc., as well as the admis­si­bil­i­ty in rea­son (jawaz) of what is pos­si­ble and the inad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of what is impos­si­ble, but adds sig­nif­i­cant­ly that reli­gious oblig­a­tions or pro­hi­bi­tions aris­ing there­from are not known by rea­son but only by rev­e­la­tion.p. 24. In Nihay­at al-Iqdam, Shahras­tani ascribes this view to Al-Ash‘ari him­self who dis­tin­guished between the act of know­ing God by means of rea­son and its cer­tain­ty through it, stat­ing that all knowl­edge is arrived at by means of rea­son but becomes a mat­ter of reli­gious oblig­a­tion (tajib) by means of rev­e­la­tion.” p. 371

Hence were one to arrive at knowl­edge of God, the cre­ator of the uni­verse, etc. pri­or to rev­e­la­tion by means of nat­ur­al light of rea­son he would be a believ­ing monothe­ist” but he would not there­by deserve any par­tic­u­lar reward ; so that if God were to reward him in the life-to-come, such reward would be an act of divine grace.Ibid. The Mu‘tazilah, on the oth­er hand, argue that man was capa­ble of dis­crim­i­nat­ing between good and evil, pri­or to rev­e­la­tion, and was in pro­por­tion deserv­ing of pun­ish­ment and reward in the life to come.Ibid., p. 26 and Al-Shahras­tani , Milal, p. 31

Now it is patent that despite this dis­tinc­tion between the two aspects of our knowl­edge of God by means of rea­son : the one entail­ing reward and pun­ish­ment, the oth­er not, both the Mu‘tazilah and the Ash‘arites were in agree­ment, as Ibn Rushd remarks, on the actu­al demon­stra­bil­i­ty of God’s exis­tence. What they dif­fered on was sim­ply the moral or reli­gious impli­ca­tions of such knowl­edge : the Ash‘arites hold­ing that pun­ish­ment and reward are con­di­tion­al upon the advent of the law,” the Mu‘tazilah mak­ing them inde­pen­dent of the explic­it dic­tates of the law.

Pri­or to the rise of the Mu‘tazilah, who ini­ti­at­ed the whole cur­rent of scholas­tic the­ol­o­gy (kalam) in Islam, of course, the ques­tion of the demon­stra­bil­i­ty of God’s exis­tence, like the remain­ing ques­tions of ratio­nal the­ol­o­gy, could hard­ly arise. The ear­ly jurists and the­olo­gians, such as Malik b. Anas (d. 795) and his fol­low­ers were con­tent with a the­o­log­i­cal knowl­edge root­ed in Scrip­ture. Like the Sufis, who believed that God could be appre­hend­ed direct­ly, these Tra­di­tion­al­ist sought the ground of their belief in God in a non-ratio­nal sphere : that of rev­e­la­tion or authority.

Thus nei­ther for Tra­di­tion­al­ism nor for Sufism was a proof of the exis­tence of God nec­es­sary at all, since the exis­tence of God was giv­en direct­ly either in Scrip­ture, accord­ing to the for­mer, or in the mys­ti­cal process of direct appre­hen­sion, accord­ing to the latter.

If the argu­ment from causal­i­ty (cos­mo­log­i­cal or aiti­o­log­i­cal argu­ment), ini­ti­at­ed by Aris­to­tle and devel­oped by his fol­low­ers through­out the cen­turies, is right­ly regard­ed as the clas­si­cal argu­ment for the exis­tence of God in the West, the argu­ment a novi­tate mun­di (dalil al-huduth), of which the argu­ment a con­tin­gen­ti mun­di (dalil al-jawaz), is a mere vari­ant, can be safe­ly assert­ed to rep­re­sent the clas­si­cal argu­ment for the exis­tence of God in Islam.

The Aris­totelian argu­ment, which rest­ed upon the con­cept of causal­i­ty, was nev­er viewed with favor in the Mus­lim world, not even by the great rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Arab Aris­totelian­ism : Avi­cen­na (d. 1037) and Aver­roes (d. 1198). The for­mer laid spe­cial empha­sis on the argu­ment from con­tin­gency in a man­ner which def­i­nite­ly influ­enced the lat­er Mutakallims ; the lat­er showed def­i­nite predilec­tion for the tele­o­log­i­cal argu­ment (dalil al-‘inayah) which had a basis in the Qur’an,Cf. Kashf, p. 45 and Wensinck, op. cit., p. 23 and was of a more com­pelling nature than the oth­er argu­ments, accord­ing to him.

The main rea­son why the cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment was thus reject­ed out of hand by both the philoso­phers and the the­olo­gians was the fact that the con­cept of causal­i­ty upon which it rest­ed had been exposed to doubt since the begin­ning of Kalam. Al-Ghaz­a­li (d. 1111) con­tin­u­ing a long tra­di­tion of spec­u­la­tion on this theme, repu­di­ates the valid­i­ty of the causal prin­ci­ple in Ques­tion 17 of his famous Taha­fut on the ground that the alleged neces­si­ty of this prin­ci­ple is a mere illu­sion ; because it is unwar­rant­ed infer­ence, based on obser­va­tion from the cor­re­la­tion of events. Obser­va­tion, how­ev­er shows sim­ply that the alleged effect hap­pens along­side the cause rather through it (cum se non per se : indahu la bihi) and accord­ing­ly, such a cor­re­la­tion is not log­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary but is rather the out­come of a cor­re­la­tion is not log­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary but is rather the out­come of mere psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­po­si­tion or habit.Cf. Taha­fut, Ed. Bouyges, 1927, p. 285 Cp. Hume, Trea­tise, Oxford 1941, p. 16593

It is clear from the fore­go­ing that Wensinck’s state­ment that the argu­ment a novi­tate mun­di is anal­o­gous’ to the Aris­totelian-Thomist proof ex parte motus et ex ratione cause effi­ci­en­tisOp. cit., pp. 26 – 27 is rather sur­pris­ing, since the very valid­i­ty of the causal prin­ci­ple is chal­lenged by the Mutakallims. More­over, the Aris­totelian argu­ment pre­sup­pos­es the car­di­nal meta­phys­i­cal dis­tinc­tion between poten­tial­i­ty and actu­al­i­ty (which the Mutakallims also reject­ed, sub­sti­tut­ing for it the dual­i­ty of sub­stance and acci­dents); and is fur­ther inde­pen­dent, as Mai­monides (d. 1204) and Aquinas (d. 1272) both rec­og­nized, from the the­sis of the begin­ning of the world (round which the argu­ment of the Mutakallims cen­ters as we are going to see). Instead, Aristotle’s casu­al argu­ment for the exis­tence of the Unmoved Mover grew log­i­cal­ly and nat­u­ral­ly from the Aris­totelian the­sis of the eter­ni­ty of motion in an eter­nal uni­verse. Cf. on this ques­tion a dis­cus­sion by the author on the eter­ni­ty of the world in Mai­monides, Aver­roes and Aquinas, in Les Museon, 1953, LXVI, pp. 139f

The Tra­di­tion­al argu­ment of Kalam pre­sup­pos­es a pre­lim­i­nary the­sis upon which the the­o­log­i­cal trea­tis­es place a con­sid­er­able empha­sis : the the­sis of the new­ness or tem­po­ral­i­ty of the uni­verse (al-huduth). This cir­cum­stance explains the vehe­mence with which the oppo­site the­sis of an eter­nal uni­verse is com­bat­ed by the advo­cates of Ortho­doxy. Ibn Hazm, the Zahiri jurist and here­siog­ra­ph­er, who died in 1064, employs this as the prin­ci­ple on the basis of which he dis­tin­guish­es between the ortho­dox or het­ero­dox sects. Mus­lims or non-Mus­lim. Al-Ghaz­a­li, as is well-known, devot­ed the first ques­tion of his Taha­fut to a refu­ta­tion of the the­sis of eter­ni­ty, which he con­sid­er the most per­ni­cious the­sis of the philosophers.

The gen­er­al pro­ce­dure of the Mutakallims in prov­ing the tem­po­ral­i­ty of the uni­verse con­sid­ered in show­ing that the world, which they defined as every­thing oth­er than God.Usul, p. 33 was com­posed of atoms and acci­dents. Now the acci­dents (sin­gu­lar arad) they argued, can­not endure for two instants of time, but are con­tin­u­al­ly cre­at­ed by God who cre­ates or anni­hi­lates them at will. Al-Bailani (d. 1013) who appears to fol­low the lead of Al-Ash‘ari in this respect, actu­al­ly defines the acci­dent as enti­ties the dura­tion of which is impossible…and which cease to exist in the sec­ond instant of their com­ing to be.“Cf. Tamhid, Cairo, 1947, p. 42, Cp. Maqalat, p. 370, where vers­es 8:67 and 46:24 of the Qur’an are quot­ed in sup­port of the the­sis that acci­dents are per­ish­able by nature.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the atoms (sing. al-juz’) in which the acci­dents inhere are con­tin­u­al­ly cre­at­ed by God and endure sim­ply by rea­son of the acci­dent of dura­tion (baqa’) which God cre­ates in them.Cf. Usul, p. 56 and Taha­fut, p. 88. For a full dis­cus­sion on this sub­ject see my arti­cle in Al-Mashriq, 47, 1953, pp. 151 – 172, and Pines, Isalmis­che Atom­an­le­here, Berlin, 1936. But inso­far as this acci­dent of dura­tion, like the oth­er acci­dents, is itself per­ish­able, the whole world of atoms and acci­dents is in a state of con­tin­u­ous gen­er­a­tion and cor­rup­tion. Although the argu­ment for the tem­po­ral­i­ty of the uni­verse form the tem­po­ral­i­ty of its com­po­nent parts is the favorite argu­ment of the Ash‘arite doc­tors, it is by no means the only argu­ment of Islam­ic scholas­ti­cism. Unfor­tu­nate­ly we are in no posi­tion, owing to the scant­i­ness of our sources, to recon­struct the rea­son­ing of the Mu‘tazilite doc­tors on this ques­tion ; nev­er­the­less there is good rea­son to sup­pose that Al-Ash‘ari and his suc­ces­sors sim­ply inher­it­ed the meth­ods of argu­ment, on this and allied sub­jects, which the Mu‘tazilah had initiated.

As an instance of the inter­est of the Mutakallims in the the­sis of a tem­po­ral uni­verse, we might exam­ine here at some length the five argu­ments for the begin­ning of the world which Ibn Hazm, the great Zahiri the­olo­gian (d. 1064) advances in his Fisal ;Bk. I, Cairo, 1317 A. H., pp. 3 f. espe­cial­ly since Ibn Hazm appears to be the first Mus­lim the­olo­gian to have attempt­ed a refu­ta­tion of the eter­ni­ty of the world, on the one hand, and a proof of its tem­po­ral­i­ty, on the oth­er, with any com­plete­ness.Some of Ibn Hazm’s argu­ments fig­ure in a trea­tise by the philoso­pher Al-Kin­di (d. 870?) enti­tled : On the Uni­ty of God and the Fini­tude of the Body of the Uni­verse”. Cf. Rasa’il al-Kin­di al Fal­safiyyah, Cairo, 1950, pp. 201 ff.

The biog­ra­ph­er of Al-Ash‘ari, Ibn Asakir (d. 571 A.H.), reports that Al-Ash‘ari wrote a trea­tise called Kitab al-Fusul, in refu­ta­tion of the Mate­ri­al­ists and the philoso­phers,’ who pro­fessed the eter­ni­ty of the uni­verse,Tabyin Kad­hib al-Mufa­tari, Dam­as­cus, 1347 A.H., p. 128 which as far as I am aware, is the ear­li­est scholas­tic trea­tise deal­ing with the ques­tion of eter­ni­ty in a sys­tem­at­ic way, our sources record. Despite the state­ment of Al-Shahras­tani that Al-Ash‘ari pre­ferred the neg­a­tive method of refu­ta­tion (al-ibtal),Niya­hat, p. 11 as dis­tinct from the method of pos­i­tive proof, it is rea­son­able to assume that like Ibn Hazm, Al-Razi and oth­ers, he cou­pled the for­mer with the lat­ter species of argu­ment. Ibn Hazm’s first proof of the tem­po­ral­i­ty of the uni­verse rests on the premise that the acci­dents and sub­stances (sing. shakhs) com­pos­ing the uni­verse are finite and that time, which he con­ceives as con­sist­ing of tran­sient moments, is finite also.

In prov­ing the fini­tude of these three terms : acci­dent, sub­stance and time, Ibn Hazm does not resort to the tra­di­tion­al method of the Mutakallims already men­tioned, but main­tains that the fini­tude of sub­stance is evi­dent from the fini­tude of its dimen­sions, that of acci­dents from the fini­tude of sub­stances in which they inhere and the fini­tude of time from the tran­si­tori­ness of the moments com­pos­ing it. The sec­ond proof involves the Aris­totelian dic­tum that every­thing in act is finite. The uni­verse exists in act and is numer­i­cal­ly deter­mi­nate, there­fore it is finite. In the third argu­ment he resorts to the process of reduc­tio ad absur­dum. The the­sis of an infi­nite time, which the eter­ni­ty of the uni­verse, implies, involves the fol­low­ing absurdities :

(a) Since infin­i­ty can­not be increased, all the time that will elapse would add noth­ing to the time elapsed hitherto.

(b) The rev­o­lu­tions of a plan­et (e.g. Sat­urn) which revolves once every thir­ty years would be equal to the rev­o­lu­tions of the Upper Heav­en, which amount to some 11,000 rev­o­lu­tions dur­ing the same peri­od since one infin­i­ty is not greater than anoth­er.Com­pare Al-Ghaz­a­li, Taha­fut, p. 32 and Iqti­sad, p. 18

(c) The time elapsed since the begin­ning of time till the Hijrah (622 A.D.) and the time elapsed since the begin­ning till our day would be equal.

In the fourth and fifth argu­ments, he argues that, were the uni­verse with­out begin­ning and with­out end, it would be impos­si­ble to deter­mine it in num­ber or in nature and con­se­quent­ly we could not speak of first, sec­ond, or third, in speak­ing of exist­ing things. But this is con­tra­dict­ed by the fact that we can num­ber things and refer to the first and last things. Hence the uni­verse must have a begin­ning (aww­al).It is note­wor­thy that the Ara­bic (aww­al) cor­re­sponds to both first” and begin­ning” or first­ness”, hence the plau­si­bil­i­ty of this argument.

We can­not dwell longer on Ibn Hazm’s dis­cus­sion of this car­di­nal theme and the man­ner in which he resolves the many objec­tions to his argu­ments. But it is worth not­ing that most of the argu­ments of the lat­er doc­tors such as Al-Ghaz­a­li and Al-Razi (d. 1209) are found here in an embry­on­ic, though some­times con­fused, state. This cir­cum­stance would appear to strength­en the view expressed by Mai­monides (d. 1204), the great Jew­ish philoso­pher, that the Mutakallims were influ­enced in these argu­ments by John Philo­ponus (d. 568), author of De aeter­ni­tate mun­di, a refu­ta­tion of Proclus’s argu­ment for the eter­ni­ty of the uni­verseCf. Guide of the Per­plexed, Eng., trans., Lon­don 1947, p. 109 and Al-Fihrist, Leip­sig, 1871, Vol. I., p. 254. Cf. also De Boer’s state­ment on Al-Ghazali’s debt to Philo­ponus, His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in Islam, Lon­don, 1903, p. 159. — since it would imply that the Mutakallims from Ibn Hazm down­wards were draw­ing on some com­mon source.

With the tem­po­ral­i­ty of the world as a premise, the Mutakallims pro­ceed­ed to prove that the world being cre­at­ed (hadith) must nec­es­sar­i­ly have a Cre­ator (muhdith), by recourse to the so-called prin­ci­ple of deter­mi­na­tion”. In its barest form, this prin­ci­ple meant that since pri­or to the exis­tence of the uni­verse it was equal­ly pos­si­ble for it to be or not-to-be, a deter­mi­nant (mura­jjih) where­by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a being could pre­vail over the pos­si­bil­i­ty of not-being was required ; and this deter­mi­nant” –- they argued -– was God.

Al-Baqi­lani (d. 1013), who belonged to the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of Ash‘arite doc­tors and who is cred­it­ed with refin­ing the meth­ods of Kalam, sums up this argu­ment in suc­cinct way. The world being tem­po­ral (hadith), he writes, it must of neces­si­ty have a Mak­er and Fash­ioner (muhdith wa musawwir), just as writ­ing must have a writer, a pic­ture must have a painter and build­ing a builder.“Cf. Tamhid Cairo, 1948, p. 45

To this argu­ment, how­ev­er, he adds two oth­ers in which the mid­dle term’ dif­fers but which reveal the same dialec­ti­cal struc­ture. In the first, he main­tains that the pri­or­i­ty of cer­tain things over oth­ers pre­sup­pos­es an Agent who made them pri­or” (muqad­di­man qad­damahu) since pri­or­i­ty does not belong by nature to a pair of equals ; and this deter­mi­nant of pri­or­i­ty” is God. In the sec­ond, he intro­duces a con­cept of con­tin­gency (jawaz) and argues that things in them­selves are capa­ble of receiv­ing var­i­ous forms’ or qual­i­ties. The fact that exist­ing things are endowed with cer­tain deter­mined forms’ pre­sup­pos­es a deter­mi­nant” who has deter­mined that they should receive these forms’ and no oth­ers ; and this deter­mi­nant” is God.Op. cit., Thus Al-Baqi­lani seems to ante­date Al-Juwayni (1065) in for­mu­lat­ing this last argu­ment, which Wensinck ascribes to Al-Juwayni.

The ele­ment com­mon to these three argu­ments, it will be noticed, is the prin­ci­ple of deter­mi­na­tion” which they all invoke. Only the first argu­ment, how­ev­er, resup­pos­es in addi­tion the begin­ning of the world or its tem­po­ral­i­ty. As to the third, it con­sti­tutes the basis of the argu­ment a con­tin­gen­tia mun­di (dalil al-jawaz) which was lat­er devel­oped by Al-Juwayni (d. 1086) as Aver­roes states in Al-Khasf, in a trea­tise which has not come to us, Al-Risalat al-Niza­miyyah.Cf., op. cit., p. 54 – 56. Com­pare Wensinck. This proof, as Wensinck right­ly observes,Ibid., p. 55. This state­ment should be revised in light of the more com­plete edi­tion of Al-Baqilani’s Tamhid by Fr. R. J. McArthy, Beirut, 1957. is affil­i­at­ed to Ibn Sina (d. 1037) who seems to fol­low the lead of Al-Fara­bi (d. 950) in his respect, as Mad­k­our has shown in his mono­graph on al-Fara­bi.Al-Fara­bi et sa Place dans l’école philosphique Arabe In his major trea­tise, Al-Irshad, Al-Juwayni sets forth the more pop­u­lar argu­ment from tem­po­ral­i­ty or huduth :

If the tem­po­ral­i­ty of the world (hadath) is estab­lished and if it is estab­lished that (the world) has a begin­ning (muf­tatah al-wujud), since the tem­po­ral can equal­ly exist or not exist …rea­son requires that (the world) must have a deter­mi­nant (mukhas­sis) who deter­mined its actu­al exis­tence.“Op. cit., p. 16

Al-Baghdadi’s argu­ment, as expound­ed in Usul al-Din, dif­fers lit­tle from that of either Al-Baqi­lani or Al-Juwayni. All rest, as we have seen, on the the­sis that the world con­sists of atoms and acci­dents which have no sub­sis­tent being in them­selves since they can­not endure for two moments of time. What, we might ask, is the extent of their debt to Abul-Hasan al-Ash‘ari ?I should per­haps note here that the ear­li­est state­ment of the argu­ment a novi­tate mun­di is found in trea­tise of the philoso­pher Al-Kin­di (d. 870?) already referred to. This state­ment is iden­ti­cal, in all essen­tial respects, with the argu­ment of the lat­er Ash‘arite doc­tors. Al-Kin­di, it will be recalled was a Mu‘tazilite in the­ol­o­gy. The pub­li­ca­tion recent­ly of Kitab al-Luma‘ enables us to give a pro­vi­sion­al answer to this ques­tion, pend­ing the dis­cov­ery of fresh material.

The argu­ments of Al-Ash‘ari in this trea­tise has a dis­tinct Qur’an­ic ring. It has noth­ing of the dialec­ti­cal strin­gency of the lat­er argu­ments and rests on the obser­va­tion of the phas­es’ of man’s growth from a drop of water, to a leech to an embryo,” which the Qur’an has ren­dered clas­si­cal. In so far as it is impos­si­ble for man him­self to cause this change in his con­di­tion (tahawwul), the author argues, it is nec­es­sary that an Agent should have trans­formed him from one phase to the oth­er and dis­posed him accord­ing to his actu­al state;” for it impos­si­ble that this should hap­pen with­out an agent of trans­for­ma­tion,Kitab al-Luma‘, Ed. Macarthy, Bey­routh, 1952, p. 6 This tal­lies with Shahrastani’s account of this argu­ment in Nihay­at, p. 12 and Milal, p. 66. and by anal­o­gy the whole uni­verse requires such an agent of trans­for­ma­tion.” This terse argu­ment is of course in keep­ing with the nature of Al-Luma‘, as an intro­duc­to­ry trea­tise, but con­firms nev­er­the­less the view that Ash‘arite Kalam was not ful­ly devel­oped by the begin­ning of the 10th cen­tu­ry so that the authors of this peri­od in gen­er­al were con­tent with pure­ly rhetor­i­cal argu­ments based on the Qur’an or the Tra­di­tions. It is only with Al-Baqi­lani that a rig­or­ous appli­ca­tion of syl­lo­gis­tic meth­ods of proof begins to make its appear­ance. But even here as we have seen no attempt at an elab­o­rate analy­sis of the log­i­cal con­cepts involved is made.

The lat­er his­to­ry of Kalam reflects greater refine­ment in employ­ing the tech­nique of argu­ment and a greater sub­tle­ty in han­dling log­i­cal con­cepts. Ibn Khal­dun dis­tin­guish­es between mod­ern and the ancient stages in the devel­op­ment of Kalam and assigns the cred­it for intro­duc­ing the method of he mod­erns’ to Al-Ghaz­a­li.Cf. al-Muqad­dimah, ed. De Slane, p. 61 Cp. Gardet, Intro­duc­tion, 1948, p. 72 whether the cred­it for ini­ti­at­ing this new philo­soph­i­cal’ stage in the devel­op­ment of Kalam right­ly belongs to Al-Ghaz­a­li or some ear­li­er the­olo­gian, as Al-Juwayni or Al-Baqi­lani, is a con­tro­ver­sial issue. It is cer­tain, how­ev­er, that this stage, as we have seen, is sub­se­quent to Al-Ash‘ari’s time, and belongs to the lat­ter half of the 10th century.

Al-Ghazali’s major con­tri­bu­tion to the dis­cus­sion of the prob­lem at issue was twofold. In the first place, he brought out in a very forcible way the rad­i­cal oppo­si­tion between the teach­ing of Islam and the Aris­totelian con­cep­tion of a uni­verse devel­op­ing itself eter­nal­ly and ever­last­ing­ly ; and in the sec­ond place, he gave added point to the argu­ments already advanced by the Mutakallims, by ampli­fy­ing and per­fect­ing them. Wensinck’s stress on the bipo­lar­i­ty in the thought of Al-Ghaz­a­li, the mys­tic, and Al-Ghaz­a­li, the the­olo­gian,Op. cit., p. 8 f. is per­fect­ly jus­ti­fied. Nev­er­the­less it is only in Al-Ghaz­a­li as a Mutakallim and in his ver­sion of the argu­ment a novi­tate mun­di the we are inter­est­ed here. The most suc­cinct state­ment of this argu­ment is found in Kitab al-Iqti­sad fi’l-‘Itiqad, which he invokes, in the tra­di­tion­al man­ner of the Ash‘arites, the prin­ci­ple of deter­mi­na­tion.” The syl­lo­gism runs as follows :

    Every­thing tem­po­ral (hadith) must have a cause. The world is tem­po­ral. There­fore the world must have a cause.

By hadith, Al-Ghaz­a­li tells us, he means what did not pre­vi­ous­ly exist and then began to exist.” Pri­or to its exis­tence, this tem­po­ral world’ was pos­si­ble” (mumkin) i.e. could equal­ly exist and not exist.” To tilt the bal­ance in favor of exis­tence a deter­mi­nant” (mura­jjih) was nec­es­sary — since oth­er­wise this pos­si­ble” uni­verse would have always remained in a state of not-being.Cf. op. cit., Cairo, N.D., p. 14

It would seem, con­sid­er­ing the dev­as­tat­ing attack which Al-Ghaz­a­li lev­els against the con­cept of causal­i­ty in Ques­tion 17 of Al-Taha­fut, fla­grant con­tra­dic­tion. Al-Ghaz­a­li, how­ev­er, explains in the same pas­sage that by cause here he sim­ply means a deter­mi­nant’ (i.e. mura­jjih) and con­se­quent­ly the appar­ent con­tra­dic­tion van­ish­es. Owing to its Aris­totelian asso­ci­a­tions, this term was nev­er in vogue among the Mutakallims.

The ear­li­est sys­tem­at­ic refu­ta­tion of the con­cept of causal­i­ty as implic­it in the doc­trine of Tawal­lud (or pro­duc­tion), of which I am aware, is found in Usul al-DinIbid., p. 137 of Al-Bagh­da­di, who died in 1037, and which bears a strik­ing resem­blance to the more elab­o­rate refu­ta­tion of Al-Taha­fut. Nev­er­the­less, the­olo­gians of the lat­er peri­od are not entire­ly averse to the use of the term cause in this spe­cial sense of deter­mi­nant. For instance, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209) one of the sub­tlest the­olo­gians of Islam, employs this term and its syn­onym illah repeat­ed­ly in his expo­si­tion of the scholas­tic proofs for the exis­tence of God.Cf. e.g. Kitab al-Arba‘in, pp. 71, 77, 69, etc.

We might exam­ine here Al-Razi’s expo­si­tion of the tra­di­tion­al proofs for the exis­tence of God as out­lined in Kitab al-Arba‘in, espe­cial­ly since this is one of the fullest expo­si­tions which our clas­si­cal sources record, and one which Wensinck does not seem to have con­sult­ed in his impor­tant mono­graph.Kitab al-Arba‘in was pub­lished in 1934, Wensinck’s arti­cle in 1936. Of Al-Razi’s works he only men­tions Tawali‘ al-Anwar and Mafatih al-Ghayb. Al- Razi sums up the proofs of the exis­tence of God under four arguments.

  • The argu­ment from the pos­si­bil­i­ty (Imkan) of the uni­verse to the exis­tence of a nec­es­sary being (wajib al-wujud), Cre­ator there­of. (p. 70f)
  • The argu­ment from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the qual­i­ties of the uni­verse to the neces­si­ty of a Deter­mi­nant of the form, char­ac­ter­is­tics, and locus of bod­ies com­pos­ing it, who is not Him­self a body. (pp. 84 – 86)
  • The argu­ment form the tem­po­ral­i­ty of sub­stances and bod­ies to the exis­tence of a Mak­er there­of (p. 86), and finally ;
  • The argu­ment from the tem­po­ral­i­ty of qual­i­ties of the uni­verse to the exis­tence of an intel­li­gent Design­er who dis­pos­es things accord­ing to His pow­er and will. (p. 91)

It will appear from this brief analy­sis that these four argu­ments resolve them­selves — as Al-Razi him­self points out in the pref­ace to his dis­cus­sion (p. 67) – into two : the argu­ment from tem­po­ral­i­ty (huduth) and that from pos­si­bil­i­ty (imkan). The root-con­cept in the for­mer proof is the con­cept of time ; viz. the fact that the world has had a begin­ning in time or in Al-Razi’s words, the fact that, before its exis­tence, the world was in a state of not-being (al-‘adam). The root-con­cept in the lat­ter proof is the con­cept of con­tin­gency (jawaz or imkan); viz. the fact that the world, con­sid­ered singly as in argu­ment (1), or as a whole as in argu­ment (2), could have been otherwise.

Al- Razi, like the rest of the Mutakallims, how­ev­er, does not dis­tin­guish sharply between these two dis­tinct proofs, as Ibn Sina just­ly remarks,Kitab al-Najat, Cairo, 1331, pp. 347 and 363 and is on that account liable to some con­fu­sion. Al-Razi, for instance, defines the tem­po­ral” (al-muh­dath) in his third argu­ment as that whose being in itself is con­tin­gent” which he fur­ther describes as that whose essence is equal­ly sus­cep­ti­ble of not-being and of being,” which he adds sig­nif­i­cant­ly, is the pre­cise mean­ing of the pos­si­ble.“Op. cit. p. 86

We might over­look this point an dwell on the sim­i­lar­i­ties between these two dis­tinct argu­ments. In the first place, whether we argue from con­tin­gency for from tem­po­ral­i­ty, a nec­es­sary Being dis­tinct from the series of sen­si­ble things (p. 70) must be posit­ed as a Deter­mi­nant of the being of the uni­verse, on the one hand, and of the par­tic­u­lar mode or being prop­er to it, on the oth­er. This in fact is the point of dis­tinc­tion between the two con­cepts round which these two argu­ments cen­ter. For the argu­ment a novi­tate mun­di pre­sup­pos­es as we have seen, that pri­or to its exis­tence the being and the not-being of the uni­verse were equal­ly pos­si­ble, no account being take of the mode of being prop­er to this uni­verse as in the argu­ment a con­tin­gen­tia mun­di.

In the sec­ond place, the posit­ing of a Nec­es­sary Being out­side the series of tem­po­ral beings flows log­i­cal­ly from the impos­si­bil­i­ty of the regress ad infini­tum. That is why Al-Razi, more con­scious of the impor­tance of this cir­cum­stance than the ear­li­er the­olo­gians, devotes a lengthy dis­cus­sion to the refu­ta­tion of the two con­cepts of cir­cu­lar­i­ty (al-daur) and the regres­sus ad infini­tum (al-tasal­sul).Op. cit. pp. 80 – 84 Although he sum­ma­rizes what appears to be the tra­di­tion­al argu­ment against cir­cu­lar­i­ty, viz. that if two pos­si­ble things were said to cause each oth­er, each would pre­cede the oth­er an con­se­quent­ly itself, which is absurd,Com­pare Baidawi’s argu­ment report­ed in Wensinck, op. cit., p, 13 Al-Razi pro­pos­es a dif­fer­ent argu­ment which he states thus :

The effect (ma‘lul) requires the cause. Now if each of two (pos­si­ble) agents was the effect of the oth­er, each of them would require the oth­er and accord­ing­ly each would require what requires itself. There­fore, each would require itself, which is absurd.” (p.81).

In refut­ing the regres­sus ad infini­tum, Al-Razi begins by lay­ing down as a pos­tu­late that it is nec­es­sary that the cause should exist actu­al­ly at the time of the exis­tence of the effect, or else the lat­ter would be capa­ble of exist­ing by itself — i.e., inde­pen­dent­ly of the agency of the cause — which con­tra­dicts our orig­i­nal postulate.

1. If so, then the regres­sion of the series of caus­es an effects to infin­i­ty would entail that the whole series exist­ed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Now the whole series is either nec­es­sary in itself or pos­si­ble in itself. The for­mer alter­na­tive is absurd because a whole requires each of its parts and each of these parts is pos­si­ble in itself and that which requires the pos­si­ble in itself is a for­tiori pos­si­ble in itself too.” Con­se­quent­ly, the whole series is pos­si­ble in itself and requires a nec­es­sary deter­mi­nant (mu’aththir) dis­tinct from itself, and this deter­mi­nant is the Nec­es­sary Being.

2. If the whole series is con­tin­gent or pos­si­ble-in-itself as we have seen, and if every pos­si­ble-in-itself must have a deter­mi­nant, this deter­mi­nant is either (a) the whole series itself, (b) some­thing per­tain­ing to it, or (c) some­thing out­side it. (a) is absurd since it entails that the series deter­mines itself. (b) is also absurd because it entails the mem­ber of the series, which was assumed to deter­mine it, was also its own cause or of the cause of its cause. The for­mer is absurd for the same rea­son as above (viz.: that a thing can­not be its own cause); the lat­ter because it involves us in the impasse of cir­cu­lar­i­ty. Hence the deter­mi­nant must be some­thing out­side the series as in (c). But what lies out­side the series of pos­si­bles must be nec­es­sary-in-itself, which is the Nec­es­sary Being.Com­pare Ibn Sina, Al-Najat, Cairo, 1331, p. 383

3. Let us imag­ine a por­tion of the series of effects extend­ing from the last effect (L) to infin­i­ty and con­sist­ing of five seg­ments. Let us next imag­ine anoth­er por­tion extend­ing from the fifth seg­ment to infinity.

Now if we com­pare the first por­tion (A) with the sec­ond (B) then they would either be equal –which implies that the whole is greater than its parts –or that one is greater than the oth­er ; so that the short­er por­tion (B) would be finite, since it is short­er by four units ; and the longer would be finite also, since it exceeds the for­mer by four units. Con­se­quent­ly, the ascend­ing (tasa‘ud) series of caus­es and effects would have an extrem­i­ty and a start­ing-point which is con­trary to the state­ment that it is infi­nite.This argu­ment is anal­o­gous to one of Ibn Hazm’s argu­ments for the fini­tude of time –- cf. Fisal, I, p. 16 Not if that extrem­i­ty is pos­si­ble-in-itself, then it would require anoth­er deter­mi­nant and thus would not be the extrem­i­ty ; if, on the oth­er hand, it is nec­es­sary-in-itself, then we would have proved our case.Kitab al-Arba‘in, p. 83

With Al-Razi, we might safe­ly state, the Gold­en Peri­od” in the his­to­ry of Kalam comes to an end. The mer­it of this sub­tle the­olo­gian is that he rein­tro­duced into scholas­tic dis­cus­sions cer­tain for­mal philo­soph­i­cal aspects which the over­throw of Arab Aris­totelian­ism in the 11th cen­tu­ry had tend­ed to put aside the pale of ortho­doxy. Even the casu­al perusal of his major works would show the extent of his debt to Ibn Sina. This par­tial read­mis­sion of phi­los­o­phy into the coun­sels of scholas­tic the­ol­o­gy in Islam will con­tin­ue through­out the two sub­se­quent cen­turies. But the the­o­log­i­cal trea­tis­es of this peri­od, such as the Com­men­tary on Al-Mawaqif of Al-Iji (d. 1355) by Al-Jur­jani and Al-Maqasid of Al-Taftazani (d. 1389) — reflect the gen­er­al cul­tur­al deca­dence of the times. We can hard­ly expect to find in these trea­tis­es any orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion to the ques­tion at issue. At best they are debased imi­ta­tions of ear­li­er trea­tis­es, which make up in length for what they lack in depth or originality. Classical Islamic Arguments for the Existence of God 1Endmark

First pub­lished in The Mus­lim World, 47:1957, pp. 133 – 145

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5 responses to “Clas­si­cal Islam­ic Argu­ments for the Exis­tence of God”

  1. MUJE Avatar
    MUJE

    THANK YOU

  2. HS Avatar
    HS

    Jonathan, it does­n’t mat­ter who has writ­ten it because it isn’t busi­ness con­tent. This is a Sadqa Jariya that means, the more peo­ple spread it, the bet­ter it is…

  3. Wayfarer Avatar
    Wayfarer

    Assaala­mu’alaikum for my Mus­lim brethren (we’re attached to those close to us right?) & greetings

    I apol­o­gise to MENJ if this post does­n’t add much ben­e­fit. I’m not versed in peo­ple’s opin­ions let alone write my own. It’s eas­i­er to accept than to suggest ?

    [Sci­ence and the Types of Naturalism]

    Meta­phys­i­cal nat­u­ral­ism adopts the belief that nature is the ulti­mate reality

    For the sake of this dis­cus­sion, nat­u­ral­ism can be clas­si­fied into two types : meta­phys­i­cal and method­olog­i­cal. Meta­phys­i­cal (or onto­log­i­cal or anti-tele­o­log­i­cal) nat­u­ral­ism asserts that there is noth­ing in the uni­verse but chance and neces­si­ty. In this world­view, sci­ence relies on chance and neces­si­ty only, because nature itself con­sti­tutes a self-con­tained real­i­ty that exists, sub­sists, and oper­ates sole­ly on the basis of deter­min­is­tic and non-deter­min­is­tic laws. Method­olog­i­cal (or prag­mat­ic) nat­u­ral­ism, on the oth­er hand, pre­tends” that there is noth­ing but chance and neces­si­ty, for the pur­pose of advanc­ing sci­ence and our under­stand­ing of nature in a coher­ent and sys­tem­at­ic way. It is clear that meta­phys­i­cal nat­u­ral­ism ensues when one adopts method­olog­i­cal nat­u­ral­ism in addi­tion to the belief that nature is the ulti­mate real­i­ty, and that sci­ence can explain every­thing. But can it ?

    Sci­ence does have its meta­physics and its own assump­tions and beliefs that are tak­en for grant­ed. These beliefs, such as the belief in the uni­for­mi­ty of nature, the com­pre­hen­si­bil­i­ty of the uni­verse, and causal­i­ty, are very rea­son­able but they can­not be proved” in a strict sense. Many sci­en­tists look down on reli­gion, because reli­gion involves belief, not real­iz­ing that they them­selves have their own bias­es and beliefs. This, of course, does not mean that sci­ence is a mere sub­jec­tive project as claimed by some post­mod­ernists, or that all beliefs are equal­ly plausible.

    A quick glance at how sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries are con­firmed reveals that sci­ence is far from pro­vid­ing absolute cer­tain­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are two extremes : one adopt­ing sci­ence as the only means of dis­cov­er­ing the truth, and anoth­er, aware of the short­com­ings of the sci­en­tif­ic method­ol­o­gy, den­i­grat­ing sci­ence as an endeav­or where real­i­ty plays a lit­tle role, if any, in the con­struc­tion of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge. I adopt the mid­dle posi­tion that rec­og­nizes the lim­i­ta­tions of sci­ence but, at the same time, acknowl­edges the utmost impor­tance of sci­ence as a superb source of knowl­edge about our­selves and our world.

    [Below is from anoth­er mod­ern Mus­lim sci­en­tist’s online writing]

    The Qur’an prompts us to look at the world and to rec­og­nize God’s hand in the mar­vels of the world. We can rec­og­nize the intel­li­gence in the nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na of the world, because we have some­thing of this intel­li­gence in us. God has put some of His intel­li­gence in the human being. So there is a kind of res­o­nance between our intel­li­gence, giv­en by God, and the intel­li­gence that God has put in the world by cre­at­ing the har­mo­ny and the reg­u­lar­i­ty of the cos­mos. This makes me under­stand why the world is under­stand­able, which is one of the great­est mys­ter­ies. Ein­stein used to say that the most mys­te­ri­ous thing of the world is the fact that the world is under­stand­able ; that we can describe it by math­e­mat­ics. For a believ­er, this is some­thing obvi­ous : we see the intel­li­gence that God has put in the world.

    The point is that we have to look at the world to rec­og­nize this intel­li­gence. We have to con­tem­plate the cos­mos, the galax­ies, the stars, our plan­et, mete­o­ro­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na, ani­mal and veg­e­tal species, and so on, to learn from God, love Him and wor­ship Him.

    Allaah knows best — Thanks & wassalam

  4. Salman Avatar
    Salman

    EXCELLENT DETAILED REVIEW»» THANK YOU FOR YOUR WORK and contributions.

  5. Jonathan Avatar
    Jonathan

    Inter­est­ing stuff — a shame you don’t write your own opin­ions though, instead of post­ing the work of oth­er authors…

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