Parapemikir

The Existence of God

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). [ Read More... ]

The Existence of God

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.

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The Existence of God

After Wensinck’s brilliant study, 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.

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Islamic Philosophy

As far as Persia is concerned, as philosophy became integrated into the Shiite intellectual world from the seventh/thirteenth century onwards, the sayings of the Shiite Imams began to play an ever greater role, complementing the Prophetic Hadith.

This is especially true of the sayings of Imams Muhammad al-Bagir, Jafar al-Sadiq and Musa al-Kizim, the fifth, sixth and seventh Imams of Twelve-Imam Shi’ism, whose sayings are at the origin of many of the issues discussed by later Islamic philosophers.

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Islamic Philosopher

In no branch of Islamic philosophy, however, is the influence of the Qur’an and Hadith more evident than in eschatology, the very understanding of which in the Abrahamic universe was alien to the philosophical world of antiquity.

Such concepts as divine intervention to mark the end of history, bodily resurrection, the various eschatological events, the Final Judgment, and the posthumous states as understood by Islam or for that matter Christianity were alien to ancient philosophy whereas they are described explicitly in the Qur’an and Hadith as well as of course in the Bible and other Jewish and Christian religious sources.

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Islamic Thinker

As for the whole question of “newness” or “eternity” of the world, or huduth and gidam, which has occupied Islamic thinkers for the past twelve centuries and which is related to the question of the contingency of the world vis-k-vis the Divine Principle, it is inconceivable without the teachings of the Qur’an and Hadith.

It is of course a fact that before the rise of Islam Christian theologians and philosophers such as John Philoponus had written on this issue and that Muslims had known some of these writings, especially the treatise of Philoponus against the thesis of the eternity of the world.

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