Arguments for God's Existence in Classical Islamic Thought by Erlwein Hannah C.;

Author:Erlwein, Hannah C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2019-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

8.3The Proof of God’s Existence and al-Ghazālī’s al-Iqtiṣād fī al-iʿtiqād and al-Risāla al-qudsiyya

Shortly after al-Ghazālī completed the Tahāfut al-falāsifa in 1095, he completed another work of kalām, al-Iqtiṣād fī al-iʿtiqād.500 Al-Ghazālī himself describes al-Iqtiṣād as an exposition of the fundamental doctrines of the Muslim belief and their defence against heretical objections. The same can be said of his al-Risāla al-qudsiyya, another kalām manual laying out the fundamental tenets of Islam, which al-Ghazālī describes in very similar terms.501 The Risāla, which became part of one of al-Ghazālī’s most famous works, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, was written shortly after the Iqtiṣād.502

The Iqtiṣād and the Risāla both immediately stand out not only in comparison with al-Ghazālī’s previous work, the Tahāfut, but also in comparison with the works of the mutakallimūn preceding al-Ghazālī whom I discussed in the previous chapters: in both of these works we encounter him mentioning the existence of the creator and the proof thereof. This is not encountered in the works of other mutakallimūn before al-Ghazālī, and we recall that al-Ashʿarī, for instance, asked in his Kitāb al-Lumaʿ, “what is the proof that there is a creator for creation?”;503 al-Bāqillānī argued in his Kitāb al-Tamhīd that “for this originated, fashioned world there must be an originator, a fashioner;”504 and, finally, al-Māturīdī spoke of “the proof that the world has an originator”505 in his Kitāb al-Tawḥīd. None of them spoke of the proof of the existence of the originator. In sharp contrast to his predecessors, al-Ghazālī declares, in the Iqtiṣād, that “the objective (maqṣūd) of this science is to prove the existence of the lord (Most-High!) (wujūd al-rabb), His attributes and deeds”506 and he speaks of methods by which “the existence of the creator (wujūd al-ṣāniʿ) is known.”507 Even more noteworthy than this is that in the Risāla, al-Ghazālī’s first point of enquiry about God concerns “the knowledge of the existence of God (wujūd Allāh) (Be He praised!).”508 The same is the case in the Iqtiṣād.

The method al-Ghazālī lays out to establish both “the knowledge of the existence of God” and of “the existence of the creator,” as he has it, is the same in the Iqtiṣād and the Risāla, and it is strikingly reminiscent of the method used by earlier mutakallimūn to prove that creation has a creator, based on the world’s originatedness. Al-Ghazālī’s method takes the form of a syllogism. In the Iqtiṣād, he reasons: “every originated thing has a cause (sabab) for its origination (ḥudūth). The world is originated. This means that it has a cause.”509 Similarly, in the Risāla: “it is evident to the mind that the originated thing is not independent, when it comes to its origination (ḥudūth), of a cause (sabab) which originated it. The world is originated. This means that it is not independent, when it comes to its origination, of a cause.”510

Notwithstanding the evident similarity between al-Ghazālī’s reasoning and the reasoning encountered in the works of other mutakallimūn, there also is a conspicuous difference. Al-Ghazālī’s predecessors, we recall, were eager not only to affirm

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