The Existence of God-7
The Existence of God
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.
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.
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.
The argument form the temporality of substances and bodies to the existence of a Maker thereof. 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.
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 – 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, 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.”
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 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).
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