Is Divine Unity Compromised by the Eternality of the Qur’ān?
An Evaluation of Philosophical Disputes between the Mutazilites and the Ash’arites
Brother Daniel
Introduction
Orthodox Islam teaches that the Qur’ān is the eternal, uncreated word of Allah. When we go back through history, we notice that this was not the only position held by Muslim Ummah. It neither came through a smooth development of ideas nor through the universal consensus of Muslim scholars based on clear teachings from the original Islāmic sources. The doctrine of the uncreatedness of the Qur’ān was once a demoted view held by a politically and theologically marginalized group called Ahl-al-Hadīth who later got the support of monarchs incapacitating their contenders called Mu’tazilites who held an opposing view.
According to Campo, the name Mu’tazili is derived from an Arabic verb meaning “to withdraw, stand aside” (itazala), in the sense of “those who separate themselves.” (Campo, 2009, p. 511). There are several teachings that distinguish the Mu’tazilites from other Islāmic schools of thought; among these, their view of the nature of the Qur’ān in the light of the divine unity is what made them remembered the most in history. Günther wrote that the Mu’tazilites were known as “the People of Divine Unity and Justice (ahl al-taw˙ìd wa-l-‘adl)” because of their views on the divine attributes and on how God should treat his creatures. (Günther, 2005, p. 369). Being centered at Basra and Baghdad, the Mu’tazilites dominated the theological and political discourse of the Muslim world for over a century, however, they got all-out political support during the reign of al-Ma’mun (r. 813-833) and his two successors.
Shortly before his demise, al-Ma’mun launched an inquisition (mihnah) in which leading Hadīth People, notably the popular Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 833), were imprisoned. (Armstrong, 2002, p. 62). It is said that Ibn Hanbal was subjected to intense torture and public flogging, but he refused to renounce his position. Fakhry wrote: “for Ibn Hanbal, the Qur’ān was the uncreated and eternal Word of God and any questioning of this article of faith was tantamount to blasphemy.” (Fakhry, 2000, p. 64)
The Caliph lived for only about four months after he had begun the mihnah which was continued under his brother al-Mu’tasim (r. 833–842) as well as under the latter’s successor, al-Wathiq (r. 842–847), and was finally ended along with the political influence of the Mu’tazila during the reign of al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861). (Martin, 2004, p. 428). From there began the persecution of the once persecuted turned persecutors; the expiry of one of the most progressive schools in the history of Islāmic theology, eventually vanishing into the pages of history.
Though Mutazilites, as a school of thought, could not survive the persecution of the medieval period, the ideas that they had propagated never ceased to occupy the thoughts of Muslim scholars, instigating divisions to date. Their idea of the createdness of the Qur’ān seems to gain more and more foothold within the Islāmic intellectual circle in recent decades. (Ediwibowo, 2015, p. 353).
After al-Mutawakkil ended the mihnah, came the days of the consolidation of Sunni Islam. Armstrong wrote that gradually, the various legists, the Mu’tazilites, and the Ahl-al-Hadīth pooled their differences and drew closer together. An important figure in this process was Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari (d. 935), a former Mu’tazilite, who, after renouncing the doctrine of the createdness of the Qur’ān, attempted to reconcile the theology of the Mu’tazilites with that of the Hadīth People. According to Armstrong, al-Ash’ari agreed with Ahl-al-Hadīth that Mu’tazilites’ rejection of anthropomorphic concepts for God drained the experience of God of all content, and reduced the divine to a philosophical notion with no spiritual worth, but he appeased the Mu’tazilites by pronouncing that God’s attributes were not like human qualities. He also tried to reconcile the two views by stating that the Qur’ān was God’s uncreated speech, nevertheless, the human words which expressed it and the ink and paper of the book itself were created. (Armstrong, p. 63-64).
Though al-Ash’ari tried to reconcile those extremes, his views were not palatable for Mu’tazilites who had been so fearful of anthropomorphic notions of God that they denied the divine had any “human” attributes at all, arguing that it is impossible to say that God “spoke” or “sat on a throne,” or talk about God’s “knowledge” or “power”. (Armstrong, p. 63-64).
In this paper the writer shall carefully observe the philosophical dispute between the Mutazilites and the Ash’arites regarding the nature of the Qur’ān, outlining and evaluating the arguments of both sides, and identifying which position is preferable. In conclusion, the writer shall develop a Christian contribution to the debate, arguing how Christianity makes better sense of the problem.
The Argument for the Uncreatedness of the Qur’ān
The doctrine of the uncreatedness of the Qur’ān which was believed by Ahl al-Hadīth founded by Ahmad ibn Hanbal and then developed with several modifications by Abu Musa Al-Ash’ari, the founder of Asharites school thought that the Qur’ān in its position as the word of God is eternal (qadim) and uncreated (gayr makhluq). (Ediwibowo, 357).
The argument goes like this:
- The Qur’ān is the word of Allah (Sūrah 2:75; 7:158; 9:6).
- Allah’s word is uncreated and eternal.
- Therefore, the Qur’ān is uncreated and eternal.
The Ash’arites did not simply assume that the word of Allah is eternal, and then concluded that the Qur’ān is eternal; they rather developed some philosophical arguments to justify the premise. According to Ash’arite theology, God has eternal attributes such as knowledge, speech, and sight, which are, by nature, essential for his knowing, speaking, or seeing. Since it belongs to his eternal attribute of speech, the Qur’ān as God’s word was uncreated. (Martin, p. 83).
Al-Ash’ari himself developed a rather fantastic philosophical argument to prove the premise that the word of Allah is eternal. He argued:
“If the Qur’ān had been created, God would have said to it ‘Be!’ But the Qur’ān is in His speech, and it is impossible that His speech should be spoken to. For this would necessitate a second speech, and we should have to say of this second speech and its relation to a third speech what we say of the first speech and its relation to a second speech. But this would necessitate speeches without end which is false. And if this is false it is false that the Qur’ān is created.” (McCarthy, 1953, p. 237-238).
In this argument, Al-Ash’ari tried to demonstrate the irrationality of the idea of the createdness of the word of God as it leads to an infinite loop. The underlining assumption for this reasoning is based on the Qur’ān 36:82 which reads: “His order, when He wills a thing, is only to say to it ‘be’ and it is.” (Rippin, 2006, p. 425). Indeed, al-Ash’ari had a point if it is assumed that the only way for God to create something is through uttering the word “Be”.
The proponents of recent Ash’arite schools “tried to distinguish the word of God in two levels, namely (1) the level of kalām nafsi and (2) the level of kalām lafdhi, both in the sense of potential speech attribute (al-ma’na al-masdar) or the actual manifestation of that attribute (al-hasil bi al-masdar).” (Ediwibowo, 363). That means the Qur’ān as it exists within the “mind” of God is uncreated and eternal while the Qur’ān as it exists within the minds of reciters and on papers is created and temporal. This position seems to solve some problems but has its own limitations as we shall see soon.
The Argument for the Createdness of the Qur’ān
Contrary to the Ash’arites, the Mu’tazilites believed that the Qur’ān is the speech (kalām) of God ontologically but it is part of the creation which is created by God in time and space. The first reason why the Mu’tazilites rejected the idea of the uncreatedness of the Qur’ān was because of their fear that a multiplicity of divine attributes (sifāt) compromise God’s unity. That’s why they “tended to conceive of such things as a function of God’s relation to the world. They thus viewed the speech of God as contingent and created.” (Groff & Leaman, 2007, p. 176).
Al-Ma’mun, the seventh Abbasid caliph who launched the inquisition to clean his land from those who teach the uncreatedness of the Qur’ān used to believe that assuming the Qur’ān to be uncreated and eternal is susceptible to compromising the unity (tawhīd) of God, and thus it undermines the very foundations of religion. In his letter to his governor, he lamented the “seriousness” of such “false beliefs” and the “ignorance” of the masses about the Deen. (Martin, p. 448)
Another important reason for their rejection of this idea has to do with their belief that God is unlike his creation in essence and attributes therefore if the Qur’ān is his eternal speech, then he will be like his creatures. It is necessary to reject any existence of speech attribute in the essence of God “because ‘the Word of God’ in the form of the Qur’ān and other scriptures cannot be separated from the nature of createdness.” (Ediwibowo, p. 366).
According to the proponents of the doctrine, the Qur’ān testifies to its own createdness when it says: “We have made it a Qur’ān in Arabic, that ye may be able to understand.” (Sūrah 43:3).
Evaluation of Ash’arites’ Position
There are several reasons why the Ash’arite doctrine of the uncreatedness of the Qur’ān could not be true for spoken words or for a book, save for the Logos as in Christianity. To mention a few:
- The Nature of the Qur’ān as a Collection of Spoken Words is not Compatible with Eternity
Since the Qur’ān is a collection of spoken words, accepting it as the eternal attribute of God creates serious problems. Common sense tells us that the arrangement of words in a speech necessitates those words to exist within time as they are arranged in a sequential form coming one after another. The proponents of the doctrine of the uncreated Qur’ān simply brush aside this problem, claiming that those words exist in eternity within God’s essence simultaneously. It is difficult to imagine how actual words expressed in a speech exist without being arranged sequentially. If they are sequential, how is it possible that they are timeless uncreated actualities?
Another important point is, if the Qur’ān is the eternal speech of God, then it is vital to ask if God already had spoken from eternity or if he speaks within time as he desires. If he spoke from eternity, a question follows concerning how God communicates his words to his creations. Does God speak to his creation phenomenally or do his creations hear a static eternal speech of God? If God speaks to his creation phenomenally then the Mu’tazilites were right in arguing that accidental speech cannot be an eternal attribute of God. If the creation interacts with a static eternal speech of God, then that will lead us to the question of predestination and free will, which is beyond the scope of this paper.
- The Content of the Qur’ān does not support the “Eternal Speech” Doctrine
If the Qur’ān is the eternal word of God, then what about speeches of human beings, angels, demons, and even animals like that of ants which are quoted in the Qur’ān? Since the actual words of those creatures are directly quoted within the “eternal Qur’ān” then that makes those words essentially eternal, which raises a serious question. The proponents of the doctrine may answer this objection by claiming that those words are within the pre-knowledge of God which was later translated into human language and communicated as the Qur’ān to Muhammad. The question still does not go away because if being within the foreknowledge of God makes something eternal then everything within the created world is eternal. Why only the Qur’ān? Why not every book written and every speech made in all human history? If these cannot be considered as eternal merely because they are foreknown by God, then the words within the Qur’ān cannot be eternal only because they were foreknown by God. Such a definition of “eternality” would coerce the proponents of this idea to accept everything in existence as eternal. If they do not allow someone to claim that his human words are eternal because they are foreknown by God, then they should stop saying that the Qur’ān is eternal based on such an unsubstantiated definition. It does not make sense to say that the Qur’ān is eternal unless it is eternal as a book, standing in distinction with Allah (not necessarily written but in the Arabic language, arranged in words and sentences, etc.).
Another problem that cripples the explanation from God’s foreknowledge perspective is the Islāmic teaching that God had created a pen and a tablet and then wrote the Qur’ān on the tablet “before” creating anything. This raises a serious philosophical question because if the pen and the tablet were created before anything, and the Qur’ān was written down, then that means those things came into existence before time and space, which makes them timeless and spaceless. Unless otherwise, Muslims believe in “eternal generation” as Christians believe about God the Son, then there is no way something would be timeless and spaceless and still not share God’s essence of divinity.
- The Doctrine of Abrogation is not Compatible with the Doctrine of the Eternal Qur’ān
The doctrine of abrogation is one of the fundamental teachings in mainstream Islam (Sūrah 2:106; 13:39). If the Qur’ān is eternal, then there are contradictions within the eternal word of God. In an eternal sense, these cannot be explained as abrogation for the reason that abrogation needs chronological sequence to work. Since there is no temporal sequence in eternity and none of the verses which contain opposite commandments come before or after any one of them, then it means Allah’s words are standing in eternal contradiction against each other, canceling one another in chorus.
The foregoing three points are sufficient to demonstrate that the doctrine of the “eternal word” does not work for the Qur’ān.
Evaluation of Mu’tazilites’ Position
Mu’tazilites in general fear that the plurality of attributes compromises the unity of God, which in the writer’s opinion, is correct as far as the monadic view of Islamic monotheism is concerned. If by “one” the Muslims imply that the mathematical fraction “one” defines Allah as being one, then any plurality within him violates his unity. In the case of our topic, if Allah is one according to the definition of Islamic monotheism and the Qur’ān is his word which is distinct from him, it must be created, or else it will be something that is not identical to him, but shares his divine essence. The Mu’tazilites solved the problem by making God devoid of essential attributes, which is anything but a solution to the dilemma.
The Solution: Logos Theology
The idea of the kalām Allah being eternal and uncreated, is similar to the Christian doctrine of Logos, as recorded in the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God and the Word was God.” (Morgan, 2010, p. 30). Studies show that Islam borrowed the idea of the uncreated word of God from Judaism and Christianity. Goodman wrote: “Borrowing from ancient Jewish notions of God’s eternal word or wisdom, as manifested in the Torah, and from the related Christian idea of an uncreated Christ, traditionalists framed an Islāmic orthodoxy, in part by making the uncreated Qur’ān an article of faith.” (Goodman: 2003, p. 86). The Quran is parallel to incarnation in the sense that in Islam the eternal Word of Allah came down from heaven and was written in a book while in Christianity the eternal Word of God, Jesus came down from heaven and lived among us as a human.
Islam even goes to the extent of the personification of the Qur’ān claiming that it will come to its reciter as a pale man, talking to him and interceding for him. (At-Tirmidhi, 5:2915). To add to the confusion, according to a hadith in Sahīh Muslim, the Sūrah’s of the Qur’ān will also plead for their reciters, making the Qur’ān a multi-personal being. (Muslim, 4:1757).
Christianity makes a clear distinction between the written word of God, the Bible, and the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ. The Bible is an inspired word of God written by men of God within the frame of human history. Speech is not an essential attribute of God, rather it is an extension of God’s knowledge, a derivative. (Small, 2010, p. 59). The Bible is not eternal as a book but it is the word of God about the eternal Logos who revealed God to the fuller extent (John 1:1; 14; 5:39; 18; Luke 24:44-45). Jesus is God’s full self-expression. He is the Revelation of the very person of God. He is the Word through whom the Father created the universe, who shares the divine essence (Hebrews 2:1-3; 10-12). That is why he declared: “Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
There are some people who say that the idea of Logos is borrowed by Christianity from Greek philosophy, but contrary to their allegation, “Personifications and even hypostatizations of Wisdom and the Word existed on Israelite soil before Hellenization.” (Keener, 2003, p. 347). The idea of a personified Wisdom and Word are found within the Old Testament at large (cf. Genesis 3:8; Psalm 33:4-11; Proverbs 8). The personification of the Word is also found within the intertestamental book of Wisdom. According to the book, God’s all-powerful Logos came down from heaven to slay the firstborn of Egyptians right before the Exodus (Wisdom 18:15). This shows that though John had used the Hellenistic understanding of Logos to the advantage of conveying his message, idea of the personification of the Word is deeply rooted within the Old Testament.
The Qur’ān itself testifies to the fact that Jesus is the Word of God who came down from heaven and incarnated (Sūrah 3:45-48; 4:171). According to the Qur’ān, John the Baptist came to confirm the Word from God, who is Jesus himself (Sūrah 3:39). Even the Qur’ān goes to call Jesus qawl al-haqq (a saying of the Truth) (Sūrah 19:34). Though Muslim scholars try to exegete these verses in a different way since they are echoing the Biblical Logos theology, Christians can take them as witnesses for the truth of Christianity which is found in the very courtyard of Islāmic theology.
Christianity teaches that the unfathomable transcendent God revealed himself in a way more than words. “In the Messiah, God enters our human history and our personal lives with much more than guidance. He enters into our sinful situation, whatever that might be, in order to redeem us from sin and death.” (Shenk, 2003, p. 80).
Conclusion
The debate regarding the nature of the Qur’ān had been the source of much controversy and carnage within Islam for centuries. The proponents of the “Uncreated Qur’ān” doctrine had to brush aside the question of plurality within divine nature and hold unto the doctrine which is unharmonious with the doctrine of tawhīd, a monadic view of God’s unity. On the other side, in order to be consistent with the Islāmic definition of divine unity, the proponents of the doctrine of the “Created Qur’ān” had to devoid God of all essential attributes and interpret anthropomorphic Qur’ānic verses as mere metaphors.
After gaining political support to overcome their opponents, the proponents of the doctrine of the “Uncreated Qur’ān” tried to settle the debate by blocking any question regarding their view by saying bila keyf (without asking how), a term which became a motto in every juncture where a serious question is raised regarding Islamic doctrines.
Contrary to Islam, Christianity teaches plurality within divine unity, acknowledging the existence of the one divine being as a plural of persons and attributes. Jesus is the eternal Logos of God, who shares all divine qualities with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The essentials within the divine essence, namely, knowledge, wisdom, power, and life can be explained in the persons of the Logos and the Spirit. Islam is caught between the hammer and the anvil because of its own wrong definition of divine unity, falling into the dilemma of committing shirk and denying the eternal Word of God.
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