Introduction

In this article we seek to demonstrate how Islam as an illustration, and by extension any non-trinitarian monotheism (NTM), would be unable to say anything about God without falling into the problem of multiple eternal entities. No matter what the approach, and we discuss several of the main ones here, we describe why they fail to achieve that which is essential to monotheism- the single eternal.

We can take Islam as representative of the largest non-Trinitarian monotheism (NTM) tradition in the world today in terms of adherents. The Islamic version of monotheism is referred to as “tawhid” (footnote- that word is derived from “wahid”, which is “oneness”. Adding the “ta-” prefix verbalizes the noun (2nd person singular) so that it can be translated as something like “unification”). In terms of other NTM traditions today, modern Judaic theology has developed into mystical kabbalistic thought which does not normally engage in a philosophical arguments, and Hindu theology is similarly notoriously difficult to pin down, so we shall not engage these here. Islam in contrast, went through centuries of genuine philosophical soul-searching, as we shall see.

Islamic approach to “Attribute”, the First Question of Theology

How does theological language evolve from an initial simple God- concept? Theology is the attempt to say something about God, which in other words, is describing God’s attributes (to describe something is to describe its attributes). “Attribute” in God could only possibly relate to one of two things: either something regarding his interaction with us, else something that did not include any reference to us at all. Only the second of these is a primary description of the nature of God, although in a lot of theological talk, it is the first of these that gets referenced- our experience of God. That description of the nature of God “in and of himself” could not merely be a statement of the fact of God’s existence, but rather it would have to provide some explanation of the manner of his existence. And to describe the manner in which any intelligent being exists would mean to describe some sort of action or interaction within that being itself, in the manner that one might describe the various biological processes when asked to describe the human nature.

We will see in this article that NTM can say nothing of these actions that are inherent to the deity and this is why in the models we look at, even in the most monotheistic of them, which is the Mu’tazalite version, speech and even will are placed as extraneous to the divine essence, while the mainstream Sunni schools like the Ash’arites place knowledge, seeing and hearing within God, yet are bound to stipulate that they are “other” than his essence. The essence of God cannot have any of these are “inherent” to it, and therefore love, unsurprisingly, also finds itself outside the divine rather than inside.

These are the kinds of intense theological debate and controversy which lead to the greatest Muslim thinkers falling into various camps, the schools of Islamic thought (aqidah). My contention is that every one of the schools that make positive assertions on this question are left with the problem of multiple eternal entities, with the possible exception of the Mu’tazalites who are left sounding rather Christian. That is the most likely reason the position has long been sidelined and viewed with suspicion.

We will also note that it is possible to see these controversies in early Islam as paralleling the controversies in early Christianity. For example, saying that the attributes are “neither God nor other than him” is parallel to Christian Modalism in making the distinctions lack reality. Those that hold that the attributes are separate from the essence or that the attributes of action are separate from those of essence, and even more literally in Shi’a Neo- Platonism can be seen to parallel Christian Emanationism or Subordinationism and even Arianism with their multiple unspecified eternals. All these positions fall into the problem of splitting the substance of the deity. This is because philosophers of both religions are struggling to perform the same feat- how to reconcile the one and the many in the same entity. We will also see how these problems do not affect Christian theology in the same way.

Examining the Primary Muslim Sources

The Mu’tazalites- closest to Divine Simplicity and Christianity

Few extant writings of the Mu’tazalites exist and the evidence for their thought mostly comes from their contemporary opponents like Ash’ari and Shahrastani as well as later figures like al-Ghazali whom we shall come to later. The Mu’tazalis identify the attributes of God with his essence itself, in an effort to preserve divine unity, in opposition to other contemporaries. Fakhry describes the school of thought from the time of its putative founder, Wasil bin ‘Ata:

“According to the traditional account, the founder of the Mu’tazilite school was Wasil b. ‘Ata’ (d.748), originally a pupil of al-Hasan al-Bari, who was a central figure in the history of Islamic jurisprudence, asceticism, and theological dogma (p.45)…Jahm b.Safwan (d.745), a contemporary of Wasil, and founder of the rival Jahmite school, appears to have held the view that God’s attributes are identical with His essence, another cornerstone of Mu’tazilite doctrine and the key to their claim to be the only true Muwah-hidun, (confessors of divine unity, a name also applied to Jahm and his followers)…. Jahm and Wasil, the founders of the two earliest schools of systematic theology, dealt with roughly the same cluster of theological problems that split the Muslim community asunder as early as the beginning of the eighth century.” (p47) (…)The more abstract theological assumptions of the Mu’tazilah revolved round their second major thesis, the unqualified unity of God (tauhid), which was aimed primarily at the Manichaeans on the one hand and the anthropomorphists and other Attributists (Sifatiyah- we speak of these later, my add) on the other…” (pp.45,47,57, Fakhry)

Another quote, again describing the Mu’tazali sentiment of not dividing the divine essence:

“…Thus the references in Koran (75:22) to the possibility of seeing God, or His face (55:27), as well as His “sitting upon the throne” (7:54,20:5), are either taken at their face value, without much ado, or the logical inference is made that God is possessed of corporeal and other characteristics which He shares with man (p.57) (…)The Mu’tazilah, despite the allegation of their adversaries that they were out to strip God of all positive characteristics, appear to have simply sought to safeguard the unity and simplicity of God. The thesis of a series of positive attributes distinct from His essence and inhering eternally in Him tended to jeopardize this in so far as it involved, according to them, a plurality of eternal entities other than He.” (Fakhry, 58 ref. Al-Shahrastani, al-Milal, p.30)

Here Fakhry quotes Ash’ari writing about the Mu’tazalites.:

“Even the chief antagonists of the Mu’tazilah, al-Ash’ari; brings out vividly, in his account of their view of the unity of God, their preoccupation with safeguarding His otherness and His transcendence above everything else: “The Mu’tazilites are unanimous that God is unlike anything else and that He hears and sees and is neither body, ghost, corpse, form, flesh, blood, substance, nor accident and that He is devoid of color, taste, smell, tactual traits, heat, cold, moistness, dryness, height, width, or depth…,and that He is indivisible…and is not circumscribed by place or subject to time…and that none of the attributes of the creature which involve contingency can be applied to Him…,and that He cannot be perceived by the senses or assimilated to mankind at all…,and that He has always been the First, prior to all contingent things…and has always been knowing, powerful, and living and will always be so. Sight cannot perceive Him…and the imagination cannot encompass Him…the only eternal Being, beside whom there is no other eternal being, and no God or associate to share His realm with Him.”…” (Fakhry, 58,59, quoting Al-Ash’ari, Maqalat, pp. 156-57)

The Mu’tazalis seemingly incorporated classical Greek thought, in which God can “only be known negatively”, the via negativa:

In rationalizing their view of the unity of God, the Mu’tazilite doctors were apparently influenced by the Aristotelian concept of God as the pure actuality of thought, in whom essence and attribute, thought and the object of thought, are identified, as well as by the Plotinian view that God, who transcends thought and being altogether, can only be known negatively. Curiously enough, however, this view is attributed in the Arabic sources to a more ancient Greek authority than either Aristotle or Plotinus, namely, Empedocles, generally credited by Muslim authors with the doctrine of the unity of essence and attribute in God.” (59, Fakhry quoting Sa’id, Tabaqat al-Umam, p.6; al-Shahrastani, al-Milal, p. 317)

Peter Adamson’s article is on the thought of al-Kindi (800-870CE), an early scholar and theologian of Islam and how it aligned closely with the Mu’tazalites. Here we see the affirmation of Wasil’s teaching “to posit an eternal divine attribute would be to assert the existence of a second God.” He also cautions that Mu’tazali thought is not homogenous, and there can be a “wide array of views”.

“Generalizations about Mu‘tazilite doctrines must be made with caution, since even restricting our attention to those who worked before or during al-Kindi’s time, there is a wide array of various views held by thinkers associated with the Mu‘tazilite tradition. Still, the rough outlines of a shared theory of language emerge from later reports of their doctrines. This theory was put forward primarily in the service of a negative theology that originated with the putative founder of Mu‘tazilism, Wasil ibn Ata. According to al-Shahrastani, Wasil argued that to posit an eternal divine attribute would be to assert the existence of a second God. (Adamson, 50: ref- Al-Shahrastani, Kitab al-Milal wa al-nihal, edited by ‘A. al-Wakil in two volumes (Cairo, 1968), p. 46.12-13. See further Nader, Le système philosophique des Mu‘tazila, pp. 49-50.)

Al-Ash’ari writes that early Mu’tazali thinker Abu al-Hudhayl asserted that the the attributes were identical with the divine essence, as well as identical with each other:

“ Abu al-Hudhayl affirms both that God’s attributes are the same as Him (al-sifat… hiya al-bari’) (ref: al-Ash’ari Maqalat, 177.14-15 [VE XXI.62]) and, that His attributes are not distinct from one another (ibid.,177.15-16 [VE XXI.62]: “If someone asked (Abu Hudhayl): ‘is [God’s] knowledge [God’s] power?’ He said, ‘it is false to say that it is [His] power, and false to say that it is other than [His] power.’” See also 484.15-485.6 [VE XXI.64]). Abu al-Hudhayl and other Mu‘tazilites also suggest that, unlike created things, God may have attributes by virtue of His “essence (dhat)” (ref: For this position in al-Nazzam see al-Ash‘ari, Maqalat 486.10-14 [VE XXII.173]. For Abbad ibn Sulayman, see 165.14ff [VE XXV.27], and also Daiber, Das theologisch-philosophische System des Mu‘ammar, pp. 203ff. Similarly Dirar says that God is “knowing” and so on “through Himself” (li-nafsihi): al-Ash‘ari Maqalat, 281.14.) (Adamson, 53)

Mu’tazali’s on Metaphor/Negation/Contingency/Createdness of Divine Attributes

Having stated that all things in God (attributes, essence) are the same thing, the Mu’tazalite try to give an account of just what we are referring to when we do speak of these attributes. To first summarize the various explanations first: Mu’ammar (d.830CE, from Baṣra), and al-Ayadi (a contemporary of Ash’ari) took the approach that the attributes are metaphorical. Others like al-Nazzam and Abu’l Hussain al-Salihr take a via negativa (we can only say what God is not, not what he is). Al Juba’i, the famous teacher of al-Ash’ari, and also Mu’ammar say that the attributes are only effects of God in creatures, which makes them contingent. Some like Abad al Sulaiman deny outright even the validity of the question. Abu Hashim, a leading Mu’tazalite and son of Al-Juba’i holds that the attributes are “neither existent nor non-existent” and are “states” (hal) of the essence. He and others like Mu’ammar propose a priority of attributes as grouped between essential and those of action. Ash’ari documents that only attributes like “life” and “eternity” are seen by them as essential and there is raging controversy over will and speech.

Having summarized, we now look at the individual quotes. First, Al-Ash’ari lists these approaches:

“In rejecting the thesis of a series of eternal attributes inherent in God, the Mu’tazilah hoped to vindicate His absolute unity. The Koranic view of a personal Deity of such overwhelming concreteness, however, made it virtually impossible to give up altogether the positive attributes of God, especially that of power. Recognizing this difficulty, many Mu’tazilite scholars sought earnestly to rationalize the divine attributes in a manner which, while it safeguarded God’s unity, did not at the same time jeopardize the fullness of His Godhead. Four different attempts to wrestle with this problem are distinguished by al-Ash’ari in his account of Mu’tazilite doctrine:

• Some held, he states, that in saying that God has knowledge, power, or life, etc., we simply assert that He is knowing, powerful, living, etc. and that consequently He is not ignorant, impotent, or dead, etc., since this would not become Him. This is reported as the view of al-Nazzam (ref: Al-Baghdadi, Usul al-Din, p. 91, and Maqalat, p. 486.) and the majority of the Mu’tazilah of both the Schools of Baghdad and Basra.

• Others are said to have interpreted the statements that God has knowledge or power as referring not to the two attributes of knowledge or power as applied to God, but to the objects thereof.

• Some, who included the famous Abu’l-Hudhail and his followers, as we’ve already seen, conceded the fact that God has power, knowledge, life, etc., but only in the sense that His knowledge, power, etc. are identical with Him (ref: Usul, p.91; al-Shahrastani, al-Milal, p. 34; and al-Khayyat, Kitab al-Intisar, p. 59)

• Finally, some contested the very legitimacy of stating the question in these terms and held that it is equally wrong to say that God has power, knowledge, life, etc., or that He does not. This appears to have been the view of another leading doctor, ‘Abbad b. Sulayman, and his followers.

(Fakhry, 59; quoting Al-Ash’ari, Maqalat, pp. 177 f; also pp.483 ff; and Wensinck, Muslim Creed, pp.75 f)

Fakhry elaborates further on a similar theme. The overriding objection to the Mu’tazalites seems to be that they literally negate the attributes and render them meaningless. Their opponents are concerned by this because they feel it detracts from the Qur’an which makes positive attributes to God:

“Other theologians, prompted by the desire to overcome the difficulty of predicating positive attributes of God, resorted to other dialectical devices. Thus Ibn al-Ayadi, a contemporary of al-Ash’ari, argued that attributes are to be predicated of God only figuratively or metaphorically. (ref: al-Ash’ari Maqalat p.184) Another notorious but subtle dialectician, Abu’I-Husain al-Salihr (9th century), maintained that there is nothing more to the statement that God is knowing, powerful, living, etc. than the recognition that He is distinct from other beings so qualified or the confirmation of the substance of the koranic verse that “He is unlike anything else” (Koran 42:11), a thesis which reduced the attributes of God to empty verbal utterances (Fakhry, 60).

Later Mu‘tazilites agreed, often providing additional arguments for the point, that God’s oneness prevents our positing real and distinct divine attributes (…) But what do the Mu‘tazila mean when they say that there are no such divine attributes? Later, hostile authors like al- Shahrastani are quick to accuse the Mu‘tazila of ta‘til, the rejection of the attributes authorized by the Qur’an (Adamson, 51)

Some teach that the attributes as not something in God but rather mere “effects” (of God) in creatures. Again, this corrodes the reality of the attributes altogether, through the implication that since they inhere in contingent things, hence they themselves are contingent rather than eternal:

“Later doctors, such as al-Juba’i (d. 915), the famous teacher of al-Ash’ari, while asserting the attributes of God, simply reduced them to corollaries or, if our authorities are correct, effects of the essence of God, and denied that some of those attributes (such as hearing and seeing) could be predicated of God unless they are in an active relationship with their object or subject matter (i.e., the thing heard or seen) (ref:al-Ash’ari,Maqalat 175f.492,522; also al-Baghdadi, Usul al-Din,p.92) This original view would have rendered the attributes of God purely contingent accidents of His essence, dependent as they were held to be on their contingent object…” (Fakhry, 60)

“…Al-Kindi defines essential properties as follows: a thing is essentially F if it would be destroyed by becoming not-F” (…) Mu‘ammar ibn ‘Abbad al-Sulami is said to have held that God has a word “not in truth (fi al-haqiyya) but only metaphorically (‘ala al-majaz),” and the same contrast was used by the early theologian Jahm ibn Safwan. In part al-Kindi’s solution to the problem of divine attributes agrees with the Mu‘tazila, by associating the attributes with God’s “self” or “essence” (dhat). (Adamson 55, see fn.34,35)

Al-Maturidi mentions this approach of the Mu’tazilites in his book:

“[Ka’bi] also said that in reality God does not have Attributes, but this is [just] the manner in which people name Him.”

(Maturidi, p103. He says the Mu’tazilites call Ka’bi “their best scholar in the whole world”. The translator notes that none of Ka’bi’s works are extant [p.101], and further he states [p103]: “Al- Maturidi relays the position of al-Ka‘bi where his argument is that the Attributes of God are our description as opposed to being the actual Attributes of God. Therefore, ‘Mercy’ is not an Attribute of God, but instead it is His action, and therefore He should not be described using it. Thus, His attribute is merely God’s saying He is merciful.”)

Al-Taftazani mentions it too: “the philsophers and the Mu’tazalites denied this and asserted that the attributes are the very essence itself” (al-Nasafi, 50)

Fakhry continues to describe yet other Mu’tazilite positions:

“A leading Mu’tazilite doctor, Abu Hashim (d.933), son of al-Juba’i, refined his father’s view by declaring the attributes of God to be states or conditions (singular: hal) of His essence, which are neither existent nor non-existent, or even knowable except through the entity to which they belong, but are nevertheless that which sets one entity apart from another. However, unlike other exponents of this view, Abu Hashim appears to have assigned a certain priority to some attributes, such as life, over others, such as knowledge, power or will, which were stated to be concomitant conditions or effects of life (Fakhry, 60,61; ref. al- Shahrastani either Nihayat ?or Usul al-Din, p132).

Classification and Priority of Attributes

We’ve seen how Abu Hisham places priority of the attribute of life over the others. Mu’ammar considered that love, will, munificence, speech, mercy, justice and creation which “could be affirmed and denied of God”. The fiercest controversy raged over two particular attributes- divine will and speech:

…Even when applied to God, the concept of eternity (qidam) was viewed with suspicion by some Mu’tazilite scholars, who were anxious to remove the barest hint of plurality in God. Thus Abu’l-Hudhail retained the concept and subsumed it under the same category as the other attributes, which he identified, as we have seen, with the essence of God. Mu’ammar made its application to God conditional upon the inception of contingent entities (huduth), whereas others challenged the validity of this approach to the problem and even denied that God could in any way be described as eternal” (Ref: Al-Ash’ari, Maqalat, p.180). However, with regard to the other attributes of God, the Mu’tazilites made a distinction between essential and active attributes (…) Active attributes, on the other hand, such as love, will, munificence, speech (p.61) mercy, justice, and creation, could be affirmed or denied of God (Maqalat 187,508f.) This amounted to the admission that the latter class of attributes, which are in some relation to their object, are not essential to our conception of God, nor do they belong eternally to Him, as the former class does, but are merely accidental or contingent.” (Fakhry, 61, 61)

Significantly, even the Will of God is called into question because after all God wills interaction with creatures and creation itself, so some place this aspect of willing in the second category, the attributes of action rather than of essence. Others held that there are two types of will in God and still others held that willing is not one of God’s attributes at all. The controversy over the speech of God is part of this and led to a bitter controversy as to whether the Qur’an itself, which is in some sense the word of Allah is created or eternal. “Knowledge” is taken to be an attribute of the essence of God by Ghazali who comes much later.

“The two attributes over which the fiercest controversy raged in theological and philosophical circles were will and speech. In view of the logical correlation between the divine will and its contingent or created object, a number of Mu’tazilites, particularly the Basrah section of the school, with Abu’l-Hudhail at its head, declared the divine will to be a contingent accident (hadith), and as such to inhere in no substratum, since it could not without logical inconsistency be said to inhere in God Himself (ref: Al-Baghdadi, Usuul al-Din, pp. 90 f., 1o3; al-Ash’ari, Maqalat, pp. 189 f., 510). The head of the Baghdad section, Bishr b. al-Mu’tamir, and his followers, however, distinguished between an essential and an active will in God (Al-Ash’ari, Maqiilat, p. 190.), thereby emphasizing the bipolarity of this elusive concept in its double relation to God on the one hand and to the creature on the other. Others, such as al-Nazzam and al-Ka’bi, went one step further and denied altogether that this attribute could apply to God (Fakhry 61,62).

Similarity between Mu’tazili and Christianity, in Muslim quotes

The Mu’tazalites hold that God, his essence and his attributes are one and the same identically. It is a bit difficult to ascertain exactly what they made of God’s speech, whether they also meant that knowledge in God is a created concept due to his transcendence. But apart from this the assertion that God is identical to his attributes of Word and Spirit is directly in line with Christian doctrine and significantly that trinitarianism entails the presence of no second or third eternal entity rather only one is in line with their notion of divine simplicity without division, unlike the other schools. What if there is only one attribute, that of divinity. If that attribute subsists in the divine essence, then why can it not also be the divine essence, why do we require a distinction between essence and attribute? It is by virtue of that attribute, the attribute of being what-God-is, that God is able to produce created effects. The created effects like mercy and compassion are then the expression of God to creation itself.

Islam’s own Ash’ari scholars who we meet in the next section recognized this problem of similarity of Mutazalism with Christianity and tried to avoid it. We quote this here though:

“The Philosophers and the Mu’tazilites denied this and asserted that the attributes are the very essence itself. This means that His essence with respect to its connection with things known (al-ma’lumat) is described by the term “Knowing” and with respect to things over which He has Power (almaqdurat) is described by the term “Powerful,” and so on. This, they say, does not imply any plurality in the essence [of Allah] nor does it imply the existence of numerous eternal and necessarily existent beings. The answer to this is to be found in what has already been said, namely, that [even according to us] the existence of numerous eternal essences [outside of Allah] is an impossibility. Furthermore, their contention [that our belief in the existence of eternal attributes within Allah implies a belief in the existence of eternal essences outside of Allah] does not follow (…) nothing can be said to be an attribute of something unless it subsists in that something. This is unlike the Mu’tazilites, who assert that Allah speaks with a kind of Speech which subsists in something outside Himself (…)They are not He nor are they other than He/that is, the attributes of Allah are not His essence itself nor are they other than it. This implies neither the eternity of that which is other than He nor the plurality of eternals. Although the Christians do not expressly state that there are distinctly different eternal beings, yet this position compelled them to posit the three persons of the Godhead (aqanim) namely Existence, Knowledge, and Life (ref: These terms, Existence, Knowledge, and Life, as applied to the persons of the Trinity are also given in al-Shahrastani, al-Milal, p. 172), calling them the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (ruh al-qudus). They claim that the person (uqnum) of Knowledge transferred himself into the body of Jesus on him be peace so they permit the separation and transference of the persons, inasmuch as they are distinctly different essences (…) the Necessarily Existent in His essence is Allah and His attributes, the idea being that these are necessarily existent in the essence of the Necessarily Existent. But in themselves they are possibles. There is no absurdity in the eternity of the possible if this eternity subsists in the essence of the Eternal, is necessarily existent in Him, and is not separated (munfasil) from Him. Not every eternal is a god, so the existence of a number of gods is not to be implied from the existence of eternals. We must rather say that Allah taken with His attributes (bi sijdtihi) is eternal. The term “eternals” should not be used lest the estimative faculty (al-wahm) go so far as to think that each of the eternals subsists in itself and that divine attributes are predicated of it.” (Al-Nasafi, p.50-53)

Agnosticism of the Ash’ari /Hanafi-Maturidi, the “bi-la-kayefa”

The History of the Ash’aris v/s Atharis

The Wiki entry on the Ash’ari and Athari (next section) gives a good feel of the emerging theological differences:

“The name derives from “tradition” in its technical sense as a translation of the Arabic word athar. It’s adherents are referred to by several names such as “Ahl al-Athar”, “Ahl al-Hadith”. Adherents of Atharī theology believe the zahir (literal) meaning of the Quran and the ḥadīth are the sole authorities in matters of belief (ʿaqīdah) and law (fiqh); and that the use of rational disputation is forbidden, even if in verifying the truth. Atharīs oppose the use of metaphorical interpretation regarding the anthropomorphic descriptions and attributes of God (ta’wil) and do not attempt to conceptualize the meanings of the Quran rationally since they believe that their realities should be consigned to God alone (tafwid). In essence, they assert that the literal meaning of the Quran and the ḥadīth must be accepted without a “how” (i.e. “Bi-la kayfa”) (translates as “without knowing how”- my addition). Atharī theology emerged among hadith scholars who eventually coalesced into a movement called Ahl al-Ḥadīth under the leadership of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780–855). In matters of faith, they were pitted against Muʿtazilites and other theological Islamic currents and condemned many points of their doctrine as well as the extreme rationalistic methods they used. In the 10th century, al-Ashʿarī and al-Māturīdī found a middle ground between Muʿtazilite rationalism and Hanbalite literalism, using the rationalistic methods championed by Muʿtazilites to defend most tenets of the Atharī doctrine. Although the mainly Hanbali scholars who rejected that synthesis were in the minority, their emotive, narrative-based approach to faith remained influential among the urban masses in some areas of the Muslim world, particularly in Abbasid Baghdad. Ashʿarism and Māturīdism are often regarded as the creeds of Sunni “orthodoxy”, but Atharī theology has thrived alongside it by laying rival claims to be the orthodox Sunni faith. In the modern era it has had a disproportionate impact on Islamic theology, having been appropriated by Wahhabi and other traditionalist Salafi currents, and spread well beyond the confines of the Hanbali school of jurisprudence.” (Wikipedia entry)

Probably the most prominent Ash’ari thinkers apart from the founder were al-Juwayni (d.1085, thought of as second most important thinker of both the Shaf’i school of jursprudence as well as the Ash’ari school of theology, hailed “Shaykh of Islam”) and Ghazali (d.1111CE, often viewed as the literally the greatest figure in Islamic history, and only second in importance to Muhammed himself). The Ash’aris are seeking a middle ground between the literalism of the Atharis and the rationalism of the Mu’tazalis, as reflected in the title of his famous work “Moderation in Belief” from which we are quoting here.

The famous bi-la-kayfa dotrine then relates to the problem of how the the attributes can exist as real entities that are co-eternal with the essence of God. The reality is explicit in the Qu’ran and therefore is not to be denied. So rather than risk changing the meaning of the Qur’an, one simply holds that it cannot be explained. The paper by Binyamin (see refs.) traces the roots in Ash’arite teaching (ref: al-Ash’ari al-Ibana, 37, 39, eg. “Malik b. Anas, in answer to the question about Allah’s seating Himself on His throne, said, “How it is done is unknown, it must be believed, questions about it are an innovation.”)

Ash’ari theology- Imam Ghazali

Ghazali begins his treatise on the divine attributes (p.125) in seven parts, one for each attribute. He enumerates the attributes:

“We claim that God is knower, powerful, living, willer, hearer, seer, and sayer. These are seven attributes” (p.125)

The translator adds:

“”This is a central Ashʿarite doctrine—namely, that there are only seven principal attributes and that all other attributes, such as being a sustainer, steadfast, and sanctified, are derived from the principal ones. Al-Ghazālī will address the “secondary attributes” near the end of this treatise.” (p.447)

Ghazali continues:

“The seven attributes, which we established are not the essence. Rather, they are additional to the essence. According to us, the maker of the world (Exalted is he) is a knower with knowledge, living with life, powerful with power, and so on with respect to all the attributes. The Muʿtazilites and the philosophers deny this. They say: “The Eternal is one essence, and it is not possible to posit several eternal essences. The proof for these attributes establishes only that He is a knower, powerful, and living, and not [that there are attributes of] knowledge, life, and power. Let us focus on the attribute of knowledge, so that we do not have to repeat the discussion for all the attributes. They maintain that being a knower is a state of the essence and is not an attribute.” (Ghazali, 184)

The translator notes in explaining the layout of the argument in the book:
“Al-Ghazālī gave arguments in the First Part for the existence of the at- tributes. The proof he seeks in this part is to establish that these attributes are additional to essence.” (footenote 94, p.478, Ghazali)

Ghazali explains the Mu’tazalites’ reason for not including the attributes of will and speech with the essence: “because it (the will) is an occurent and he is not a receptacle of occurents” (p.194). I’m not certain just who he means by the “philosophers” here, presumably the Atharis:

The Muʿtazilites, however, make an exception for two attributes. They say that God is a willer with will that is additional to the essence, and He is a sayer with speech that is additional to the essence, that He creates will not in any receptacle, and that He creates speech in a corporeal body, and hence He is considered a sayer through this speech. The philosophers, on the other hand, extend their inference to the case of the will. As for speech, they say He is a sayer in the sense that He creates in the soul of the prophet a hearing of arranged sounds, either while he is asleep or while he is awake. These sounds have no existence outside the soul, but only in the hearing of the prophet.” (Ghazali,184,185)

We see Ghazali rejecting both, the position that one can posit nothing but the essence, and the other “extreme” by which (as I see it) he means the Athari position in which there is a profusion of literal entities without any recourse to any attempt at philosophical underpinning. He ascribes it to “some Mutazalites and the Karramites” (the translator adds that Karrāmites were among the few who attributed change to God. In fact, they were extreme literalists: they attributed to God all sorts of attributes, including corporeal ones.)

This is the second time that Ghazali seems to assert and strongly, that the attributes are “additional to the essence”, while he is also equally firm that they do subsist in the essence at the same time:

“…every group of intelligent people is required to concede that the proof has led to something that is additional to the existence of the Maker’s essence, and which is expressed as His being a knower, powerful, and the other descriptions.”

Again he restates the two positions that he is trying to marry in the middle, nothing but essence, and essence plus a lot of other things:

There are three possible positions: two endpoints and a middle. Moderation is closest to the right doctrine. As for the two endpoints, one of them is deficiency, which is to restrict existence to one essence that entails all these things and is a substitute for them. This what the philosophers assert.  The second endpoint is excess, which is to affirm an attribute that has infinitely many instantiations, such as cognitions, powers, and speeches, which correspond to the objects of these attributes. This is an extreme position which only some of the Mu’tazalites and the Karramites uphold. (Ghazali, 189)

Once again, Ghalazali clearly states his position of distinction between essence, attribute and also between individual attributes themselves- the attributes are “not the essence”:

“We say: “Moderation in belief is to maintain that every distinction is due to a distinction between the essences themselves. No one of the differentiated things can be sufficient and stand for the other things” (here he is stating a kind of law of identity- my addition). Therefore it is necessary that knowledge be other than power, and so is life and the rest of the seven attributes, and that the attributes not be the essence, since the distinction between an attribute and the essence, of which the attribute is predicated, is more pronounced than the distinction between two attributes.“ (Ghazali, 190)

Here Ghazali comes closest to saying that the attributes are identical with God, though he still avoids saying it. He never gets this close again in the book. He seems to mean that the attributes cannot be spoken of separately from God, because in subsisting in the divine essence, we cannot avoid referring to the one without referring also to the other. However we can infer perhaps that if something is not other than another thing, then it is that thing, by the law of identity:

“It might be said: “Do you say that God’s attributes are other than God?” We say that this is a mistake. For if we say “God, the Exalted,” then we have referred to the divine essence together with the divine attributes, and not to the essence alone.” (Ghazali, 193)

Thus Ghazali makes the clear statement, as the heading of the section regarding the subsistence of the attributes in the divine essence.

“Second Characteristic: “the attributes subsist in the essence”: We claim that all of these attributes subsist in God’s essence, that none of them could subsist in something other than his essence, whether the attribute is in a receptacle or not…all the divine attributes are eternal” (Ghazali,194)

Ghazali is very clear and makes a strong argument that the attributes of God are not to be spoken of separately for the essence. There is no difference between stating that God has an attribute and the attribute subsisting in his essence, since were the latter not the case, then God could not have that attribute in the first place, rather it would be attributed to whatever it subsisted in.

“There is no difference between His being of that attribute and the attribute’s subsisting in His essence. We have shown that the meanings of our saying “knower” and “there is knowledge in His essence” are one and the same. Similarly, the meanings of our saying “willer” and “will subsists in His essence” are one and the same. Also, the meanings of our saying “no will subsists in His essence” and “not a willer” are one and the same. Describing an essence as a willer through will that does not subsist in it is like describing it as moving through a motion that does not subsist in it. Thus if the will does not subsist in God, then it makes no difference whether it exists or not. So one’s statement “He is a willer” would be an erroneous expression that has no meaning.”(194)

“the names that are derived for God from these attributes are true of him eternally- pre-eternally and post-eternally. He is eternally living, knowing, powerful, hearing, seeing and speaking. As for the names that are derived for him from acts such as “the provider”, “the creator”, “the exalter”, and “the debaser”, there is disagreement whether they are true of him eternally or not” (Ghazali,213)

IN SUMMARY, Ghazali seems to hold that the attributes subsist in the divine essence, they are not the essence, rather they are other than, or additional to the essence, but are not other than God.

Hanafi/Maturidi- agnosticism again, eternality of all attributes

The Hanafi-Maturidi thinkers like al-Nasafi (Al-Nasafi, d.1142, Abu Hanifa 696-767CE, Imam Maturidi 893-944CE) like their Ash’ari counterparts, take the agnostic position “they are not he and not other than he”. They generally hold that the attributes of action are eternal.

There is a useful definition of Tawhid in al-Maghnisawi’s commentary on Abu Hanifa’s work:

“Literally, Tawhid (Divine oneness) means to declare something to be one and know it to be one. Technically it means to rid the divine essence (al-dhat al-ilahiyya) of all that is conceived by the intellect and all delusional imaginations and fancies of the mind. The meaning of “Allah being one” is to negate the divisibility of his essence and to negate any similarity or partner in his essence and attributes.” (Abu-Hanifa, 63)

The school once again, takes the agnostic position: “neither he nor other than he”:

“The names and attributes of God  are not He and not other than He…the attributes of God’ actions (…) – are all eternal and everlasting. They are not He and not other than He.” (Abu Mu’in al-Nasafi, Bahr al-kalam (1995), 90-91)

“He has attributes from all eternity subsistent in His essence. They are not He nor are they other than He. And they are Knowledge and Power and Life and Might and Hearing and Seeing and Willing and Desiring and Doing and Creating and Sustaining. (Al-Nasafi, p.49,53,80)

I think this is a direct quote from abu-Hanifa. It is a red letter section on pages 71 and 72 which is well worth reading. This is just one line from it:

“He was, is and will forever be possessor of his names and of his essential and active attributes….”(Abu Hanifa,71)

“(quoting Qari) his existence (wujud) is his essence (dhat), but his attributes (sifat) are neither his essence (ayn dhatihi) itself, in opposition to the statement of the philosophers- nor are they other than his essence (ghayr dhatihi) as the Mu’tazila have said, nor are they originated (hadith) as the Karramiyya have said…” (Abu Hanifa, p.75).

The translator Abdur-Rahman explains in the footnotes that this is opposed to the Mu’tazali position, and expresses his and others’ like Taftazani’s objection that saying that the attributes and essence are the same is akin to depriving Allah of attributes. He points out that this is a difference between them (the Maturidis) and the Ash’aris, the latter held the attributes of action to be created. He however gives his opinion on why he and other scholars feel that this is a semantic difference only (Abu Hanifa p.76,77).

maintain agnosticism with regards to the relation of the attributes to God, even though they do “subsist in the essence”. Thus they will say that they are “neither he, nor other than he”, or “neither the essence, nor other than the essence”. However something cannot both be something and not be something at the same time, this would violate the law of identity. To say that something is “not other than God” is simply and precisely to say that it is God. Thus it seems that the difference from the Mu’tazalis with regards to the identity of the attributes and the essence is not more than semantic.

Al-Nasafi says “nothing can be said to be an attribute of something unless it subsists in that something” which is true. A quality certainly must have something to do with the thing that it is the quality of. The reason for this is because they describe it, and were they to describe it fully, then there would be nothing left but the attributes. Given that, it is difficult to see how the essence could fail to be the attributes. Christians would agree that the attributes are not other than God, but would fail to see the premise for the position that there were not God either, which seems arbitrary, as we just described. In summary, this gives us a demi-agreement with Christianity, to the point of “not other than him”.

Ash’aris like al- Nasafi object to the Mu’tazalite position that for Allah to know or have power simply refers to the fact that he can be described as knowing, and powerful. Rather they want to say that knowledge and power are something that God possesses and that they are something “in him”. We can see why this is a problem not for the Mu’tazalites but rather for their opponents. Because attributes are, after all the descriptions of a thing, rather than something that exists as an entity inside that thing. An attribute is a quality that arises out of the fact of the wholeness of the entity being what it is, or of all its parts working together, rather than a part within the thing. The thing possesses the attribute by virtue of what it is, rather than by virtue of a part of what it is. For example, power is result of the full force of the deity, rather than the result of the force of some part of it. In fact we cannot even conceive of an attribute, without conceiving of the thing itself and conceiving of the whole thing. We cannot even conceptually separate attribute from essence or as less than the whole essence. However there is no logical impediment to identifying the attribute with the essence itself, and especially when it comes to immaterial essences, this seems to be the only logical option. In other words, the attributes of God cannot be other than the essence (as the Ash’aris would agree), but there is no reason that they cannot be the essence itself. In fact possibly the strongest reason for the denial of the identify of essence and attributes is that it entails the identity of all the attributes with each other too, and this is raised by al-Taftazani:

“Furthermore, their contention [that our belief in the existence of eternal attributes within Allah implies a belief in the existence of eternal essences outside of Allah] does not follow. Finally, the Mu’tazilite view would lead to the absurd conclusion, namely, that Knowledge, for instance, would be identical with Power and Life, and that it also would be identical with the Knowing One, the Living One, and the Powerful One” (al-Nasafi, 51).

This is what al-Taftazani has to say (in his commentary on al-Nasafi):

“This is unlike the view of the Mu’tazilites, who assert that He is Knowing without possessing Knowledge; He is Powerful without possessing Power, and so on. But this view of theirs is self-evidently impossible, for it is analogous to our saying, “A thing is black but there is no blackness
in it.” And furthermore it has already been established in the statutes that Allah possesses Knowledge, Power, and other attributes. Finally the procession from Allah of acts of which He has perfect understanding points to the existence of Knowledge and Power in Him, not merely to the fact that He can be described as Knowing and Powerful.” (al-Nasafi, 49)

one last quote from Taftazani. Here we see an attempt to avert the difficulty of multiple eternals by referring to the attributes as “possibles” (no further explanation of “possibles” is given, I assume it is to be taken as self-evident):

“This is what one means when he says that the Necessarily Existent in His essence is Allah and His attributes, the idea being that these are necessarily existent in the essence of the Necessarily Existent. But in themselves they are possibles. There is no absurdity in the eternity of the possible if this eternity subsists in the essence of the Eternal, is necessarily existent in Him, and is not separated (munfasil) from Him. Not every eternal is a god, so the existence of a number of gods is not to be implied from the existence of eternals. We must rather say that Allah taken with His attributes is eternal. The term “eternals” should not be used lest the estimative faculty (al-wahm) go so far as to think that each of the eternals subsists in itself and that divine attributes are predicated of it. Because of the difficulty of this question the Mu’tazilites and the Philosophers denied the attributes, the Karramitcs denied their eternity, and the Ash’arites denied both that the attributes are other than He and that they are His essence.” (Al-Nasafi, 52,53)

A more pertinent problem with the Ash’ari view is the contention that some of the attributes (those of action) are not be eternal. However I do not think this is a uniform position, because al-Nasafi does not seem to hold this position, and neither al-Ghazali. The latter admits of there being disagreements among the scholars on this issue. Al-Nasafi, includes attributes like creating, willing, desiring, sustaining, seeing, hearing all as eternal (there is a sect often referred to in these writings called the Karramites who are extreme literalists, who certainly held that the attributes are created). In any case, for those who do hold that view, this would mean that God would have to create his own love and knowledge, which are in this scheme thought not to be essential attributes of God, or not essential to him- meaning he could have been without them, just like he could have not created. The Maturidis, on the other hand, do hold to the eternity of the attributes.

Literalists: The Atharis- God’s Body Parts as Attributes

The prominent figures of the Athari school, would be the famous jurists Ahmad b. Hanbal (d.855) and Imam Shaf’i & Abu Ya’la (d.1066, important Athari theologian). Later giants in Islam like Ibn Kathir and ibn Taymiyyah are also Shaf’iist. This school, which as we have indicated before is synonymous with the traditionalist “ahl-al-hadith” and anti-rationalist is possibly correctly seen as the oldest school within Islam and can compete to the title of Sunni orthodoxy along with the Ash’aris.

The Hanbalis placed attributes like living, knowing, power, willing, perceiving (sight), speaking, hearing, willing, hands, face, feet and shin within the attributes of Essence, while those of judging, providing, forgiving, punishing, fashioning rewarding, honoring, creating are placed among the attributes of action. Ahmad b. Hanbal despised the Mu’tazalites and their theologizing and was a proponent of a literalist reading of the religious texts, and the literal reality of Koranic references to divine body parts hand, feet, face, fingers, eyes and shin. A body has a boundary, and a part makes up and is not the whole. This makes it impossible to avoid eternal entities. For example, were God to have a hand, no matter how transcendent, this would seem to necessitate a boundary where the hand ceased to be a hand and became some other body part, or some non-body part, like essence (if any). If not, then God would be nothing but an infinite hand. Same for shin/eye and other body parts. Again if Allah has no essence apart from the body, then the body has a boundary, else its not a body. That is to say, if God is defined by a body alone and nothing else, like “essence” apart from body, then there is nothing that prevents him from being outlined by the boundary of the body. That is, what does not have a boundary, is simply not a body, unless there is also a caveat, like a non-body aspect. This is why everything in the Universe has a boundary. That would mean that God is circumscribed and if so, that he is enclosed within something else which contains him. Thus you would get two eternal entities if God is a body with no essence (the second being that which contains him eternally), and also if he is a body without an essence (the second being the essence). In any case, Atharis will hold to the literal interpretation of the verse that says that Allah is “above his throne” (7:54, 20:5), so this indicates a direction in which Allah is present, “above” and a direction in which he is not “below” (he is not seated below the throne”. Thus the body is limited to a certain direction. God is able to limit himself to a certain direction precisely because he has a body. Did he not have a body, he would be omnipresent, his location with respect to throne like objects would be irrelevant. This is not what Atharis believe anyway, hence the boundary condition can certainly be made to apply in this discussion. If God has a limit, then there is something outside that limit. Even if it is held that God is not inside creation, he would still need to be circumscribed outside creation by something else that were eternal, perhaps the throne itself.

“God hears and does not doubt, sees and does not doubt, knows and is not ignorant, is generous and not stingy, Clement and not rushed, preserving and not for getting, near and not inobservant. He moves, speaks, looks, laughs, joys, and loves. He loves and hates, detests and is pleased. He is angered and displaced, has mercy and forgives. He makes destitute, gives, and withholds. He descends every night to the lowest heaven however he wills. He is the Hearing and the Observing (Q 42:11) The servants hearts are between two of the most Merciful’s fingers. He turns them over as he wills and fills them with whatever he desires. He created Adam with his Hand in his Image. The heavens and the earth and on the day of resurrection in his Hand. He will put his Foot in the Fire, causing it to recoil. He will remove a number from the fire with his Hand. The people of Paraside will look at his Face, see Him, and honour him” (Ahman b. Hanbal (d.855) Creed no.1, tr. Christopher Melchert).

“The third group of Ibn Taymiyya’s opponents comprises non-cognitivists who forbid thinking about the meaning of God’s attributes. An example of noncognitivism is Hanbali theologian Ibn Qudama’s (d. 1223) treatise Forbidding Study of the Books of the Kalam Theologians (Tahrim al-nazar fi kutub ahl alkalam). Ibn Qudama condemns Kalam theologians for inquiring into the meaning of God’s sitting and then reinterpreting it as God’s possessing. Such reinterpretation affirms one attribute that God did not affirm of Himself (possessing) while negating another attribute that He did affirm (sitting). Instead, Ibn Qudama contends, God must be described as He described Himself in the Qur’an and the Sunna of the Prophet recorded in hadith reports. The texts must be passed over (imrar) without comment and without inquiring into meaning (ma‘na) or modality (kayf). The Qur’anic verse, “There is nothing like Him” (Q.42:11) is sufficient to negate divine corporeality and similarity with creatures. The Salaf, Ibn Qudama continues, remained silent about the meanings of God’s attributes and forbade reflecting on them. They transmitted the verbal forms of the attributes but not the meanings. There is in fact no need to know the meanings since no deeds depend on them. It is correct to believe in the attributes with ignorance.” (Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya, p.108,109, One World Academic).

The other Sunni schools, in contrast, even deny that Allah has a body, so the question of body parts does not arise (eg. “he is not a body (jism) that could be measured, imagined or divided, Abu Hanifa, p.73).

Neo-Platonism- Shi’i and others

Shi’as constitute a non-insignificant proportion of the Islamic world today, while in earlier times their numbers and influence were even greater. In general, they seemed to have subscribed to the philosophy (falsafa) school of Islamic thought, the theological toolkit of which takes inspiration from the Greek philosophers. The movement began with Al-Kindi, and on through Ibn Sina, and others like Ibn Farabi, down to Ibn Rushd.

The “Neo-Platonist” group of post-Aristotelian philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyri who were the main influence for these Muslims thinkers held to God as the “Absolute One” (Plato’s “the One”, Allah in Shi’ism, Ein Sof in modern Kabala, which is modern Judaism) as completely transcendent to the extent that nothing could be said of him at all. That’s pretty much the end of the discussion with respect to God per se and for that reason. Next, from God emanates a “First Intellect” of which a lot can indeed be said (the Demi-Urge of Neo-Platonism, “ten Tsefirot” or “spheres” of Kabalah). All the familiar attributes one would normally ascribe to Allah ascribed to this First Intellect instead. Finally, from this First Intellect” emanates the “Light of the World” (World/Universal Soul of Neo-Platonism), through which God interfaces with the world.

The Shi’i derive some Qur’anic referents for these entities, for example the “pen” which is the first thing Allah created is taken as the referent for the First Intellect, and Muhammed being called nur “light” is taken for the World Soul. One can readily see the parallels with Christian Trinitarian thought, and right enough, some of the early Church Fathers did indeed propose emanationist and subordinationist models of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit too, which each deriving from the previous in succession or order.

The obvious problem is that Neo-Platonism throws up at least two eternal creatures, plus the necessary eternal creation of the physical universe as a third or fourth. The Shi’ite response is that we can admit of multiple eternal entities as long as all the rest depend on the one, which alone is independently existent (has aseity). We’ll enumerate the problems with this assertion.

FIRST objection is that such a thing as “eternal creation” is not philosophically coherent. Ontology is a description of reality and the distinction of objects that comprise it, if any. Creaturely reality is not the same as God’s reality, it must be metaphysically contained within a larger reality, since it cannot itself be the all-encompassing reality. In non- SNP monotheism, this larger all-encompassing reality is God himself. This enables us to preserve the idea that God is the only true and independent reality who ie categorically unique. In Shi’i Neo-Platonism (SNP) on the other hand, we obtain a reality that is God, and also several that are non-God existing in parallel, thus yielding a patchwork background reality. There is no greater reality that contains and grounds the lesser realities. Eternal reality is not comprised by God alone, while in non-SNP monotheism it is.

SECOND, SNP has a complex background reality of which the divinity is only a part. SNP aims to preserve divine simplicity, but shifts the complexity onto eternity instead. A basic tenet of meriology is that the part is less than the whole and in SNP the reality of God is actually less than that of God plus creation. In SNP creation is a “necessary” emanation from God, and since it is necessary to God, God himself does not achieve fulness without creation. Thus were there no creation, this would be an unacceptable situation for God. SNP cannot provide for a state of God without creation, he only exists as a creating thing. Rather than creation being dependent upon God, it seems that the direction of dependency is from God to creation primarily. In fact in this model of God and creation as of a patchwork reality, it is hard to define the ontological distinction between God and creation.

THIRD, in SNP, a dependency relation is used to justify the possibility of multiple eternal entities. However an eternal ontological distinction entails eternal ontological separation. Dependency, on the other hand, implies unity at the point of derivation, as “origin from”. One thing cannot have an “origin” from another thing if it was never at one point united with that thing in the first place. We cannot both have prior ontological unity and eternal separation simultaneously. Emanation language makes this even more clear, it presumes “origin from”, which in turn entails prior unity. To put it simply, entities cannot be both eternally distinct and mutually derived. The eternity of the distinction precludes the possibility of the mutual derivation- because the distinction is always true, the derivation never is. This is the reason that Christianity would never allow for the Son to be ontologically distinct from the Father, it isn’t possible in a monotheistic model. In non-SNP, creation is not through emanation, as something coming out of God “ex deo”, rather it is “ex nihilo”, from nothing. SNP cannot even claim creation from nothing.

FOURTH is the problem of the status of these eternal entities. All the three are in some sense Divinity, since we are never given any indication that they worship the divinity (Shi’is do not say that the Fist intellect worships God, nor do Neo-Platonists indicate a worship relationship between the DemiUrge or World Soul and the One, nor between the kabalan tsefirot). This seemingly confers upon them a sort of demi-God type status. It yields a demi-god like entity (hence presumably “demi” urge) analogous to the Arian or modern-day Jehovah’s Witness’/ Unitarians’ version of Jesus (In these, Jesus who is not taken as God Almighty, and it is unclear as to whether he worships as opposed to receiving worship, he saves the world somehow with his Blood, showers his graces and blessings upon us, purifying, judging, forgiving and so on, all deity-like activities, if anything). It would seem absurd to say that there were not rational themselves, for example something with the “first intellect” as its very name could hardly be unintellectual, and on top of that it were the receptacle of the very attributes of God, that should hardly fail to confer rationality upon it at the very least.

FIFTH as a result of the First Intellect we cannot interact directly with God, rather only ever with a creature. And if we cannot interact directly with God, then do we also worship that creature with which all our interactions take place? Is religious life the interation with a creature? On the other hand if our interactions and worship are directly toward God, then is the creature redundant at best, and a blasphemous intermediary at worst, like the priest that claims exclusive access to the deity.

SIXTH and finally, due to creation being a necessary emanation from the deity, not only do we have a deterministic view of creation, we have a deterministic view of the deity too. God did not have the choice not to create in SNP, and irrespective of whether we lable this “libertarian” free will or not. Apart from being an unsurmountable philosophical problem, it is also a specific Islamic problem because it seemingly flies in the face of the “divine decree” or qadr doctrine, on of the six pillars of iman (faith), by which every one of the events in our own history and possibly even down to our own choices are decreed by Allah. It is one thing for our own fates to be deterministic, but for the deity to be deteminied as well?

IN SUMMARY, the problem of Shi’isim is that ontologically distinct eternal eternities entails either tritheism or Divine complexity which Shi’ism rejects anyway. They entities could not be creatures since for the reasons given, creatures cannot be eternal and simultaneous with the deity, cannot exist in a non-worship relationship with the deity, and attributes of deity cannot be ascribed to them. The positives of Shi’i Neoplatonism is its tripartite model which parallels Christian Trinitarianism. The latter avoids the same problems by denying ontological distinction in the entity(s).

Conclusion: the Problems of the various Islamic “Tawhid” Models

We have demonstrated here how Islam, and by extension any non-trinitarian monotheism, would be unable to say anything about God without falling into the problem of multiple eternal entities, no matter what the approach. We can now summarize the various approaches which Islam employed, and why we would say that they fail to achieve that which is essential to monotheism- the single object of worship.

FIRST, the Mu’tazalites most of all the schools seemingly sought to preserve unitarity of the divine essence, and they did this by making it identical to the divine attributes. They held that when we do speak of distinct attributes, this is either purely metaphorical, true only in the manner of negation, “both existent and non-existent”, or “can be both affirmed and denied” of God. The intent is to leave the transcendentally simple divine essence undivided and undescribed. Their opponents like Shahrastani accused them of ta’til which is to deny the attributes altogether, making them “no more than the essence”, which was the point in the first place.

Some from this admittedly heterogenous school sought to group the attributes into those of the Essence, and those of action (therefore not of God’s essence). The latter group, once again, might be thought of as merely contingent, inhering only in created things. God does not really have them, rather he creates them. If taken literally, this would mean that God does not really possess attributes like love, mercy, forgiveness and most controversially for them, speech and will too. As an entailment they also contended that the Qur’an was not eternal, which move was to prove their political undoing and ultimate demise.

SECOND, The Ash’aris as well as the Hanafi-Maturidis, while denying that the attributes are identical with the essence, also maintain that they are also “not other than” it. If this sounds confusing it’s because its contradictory. If p is non-q, then p is not q, it the law of excluded middle and the same as saying something like “this is not your wife/husband but it is also not other than your wife/husband”. The Ash’aris would respond to such difficulties through the bi-la-kayefa type response (we don’t know how). The point is not that it causes multiple eternals, rather that the refutation of the Mu’tazali stance that the attributes are identical the the essence lacks a premise or has an agnostic premise.

Not all of these believed the attributes to be eternal, certainly the “Karramite” sect thought that they were not. If the attributes of God are not eternal then God would have to perform the action of creating his own attributes of action, yielding an infinite regress problem. For example he would have to create his own attribute of creating. And being unforgiving, how can he create forgiveness, same for love, and mercy and so on. None of the schools of Islam even have a place for love among the attributes of God. In fact I’ve not also seen talk of mercy and forgiveness, so I need to look at this again.

THIRD the Atharis, (Ibn Hanbal as the founder): In their model there is no seeming means by which the problem of multiple eternals may be avoided, since they believe God has literal body parts as part of his essence. We’ve seen the reasons for this in the text, but a literal hand cannot be infinite, were it so, it would never stop being a hand so that it could at some time begin to be a foot, for example. This would entail either God’s parts being finite, and therefore truly “parts”, or God were an infinite hand, for example, and nothing else. If a body part has a boundary, then it must be enclosed within a greater reality from which that boundary separated. If the body parts do not have boundaries, then it is hard to know what is being said, plus the infinite part problem that we just stated. Atharis use the same agnostic approach as the rest in addressing this, even to the extent of opposing questions being asked, as we have seen. This is the most fundamentalist and literalist of the mainstream schools of akeedah with the least attempt at rationalism.

FINALLY, the Shi’as (predominantly but also some others) adopt a Neo-Platonic model in which God’s attributes reside in a different entity altogether, the “First Intellect”. Further, God interacts with creation through a further entity, the “world soul”. This is the sort of demi-God problem of Arianism or modern-day Jehovah’s Witnesses. Since God creates or “emanates” these necessarily, they must be co-eternal with him. Why does God whose attributes are transcendent require his attributes (presumably the non-transcendent of them) to subsist in a creature? Apparently God requires this in order to interface with creation and to be able to communicate and give his blessings to them. Again, this begs the question as to how he interfaced with that first creation in the first place. The main problem here is that which bears God’s attributes not also God.

I will add as a final note that a further problem that arises for some of the schools, mainly the Ash’aris (possible exception of Ghazali) is of the createdness of the attributes. This is best illustrated in relation to two of these: love and speech (as we’ve discussed in the other NTM article). In short, in the absence of love as an essential attribute, we have an inherently loveless deity, and in the absence of speech as an essential attribute, which is taken as knowledge, then an ignorant deity too. Anything that has wisdom must possess an “internal speech”, an ability to consider its own thoughts, even if it isn’t communicating externally. We can’t have complete “radio-silence” in the mind of an intelligent being, like someone in a coma.

Why Christianity does not encounter these Issues

This first thing to say here is that there is no reason a priori why “God” should signify something different from “God’s attribute”. That we might use it in a different sense in order to describe our human experience of the deity (or deity-concept) does not entail any corresponding real distinction inherent to God. Thus there is no necessary difference between “what God is” and “what God is (like)”, indeed the attribute of being divine is the divine being itself. Considering that God might have only one attribute might make this even easier to conceive- the fact that we use several words to describe our experience of the deity that seem distinct to us does not necessarily entail any real corresponding distinction in the deity. Again, there need be no distinction between God and the attribute of being him, his single attribute, only in the manner of speaking. Thus either God’s attribute is identical with his essence, else what we’re talking about is created effects and experiences and not about God per se. The third option, of the attributes being distinct entities from God is unacceptable due to the problem of polytheism. What seems to be the modern day Muslim orthodoxy “the attributes are neither the essence nor other than the essence” is agnostic, denying both available options, a fourth position.

We can correctly be described experiencing multiple attributes in our interactions with the deity, akin to the normal human range of emotions. But that does not entail there being different things in God. God is Godly. Being divine is the Divine Being. Another way of looking at it: we comprehend under multiple aspects the one attribute of God which is beyond our understanding. For example, even Muslim theologians divine the attributes of God into those of essence and those of action. This is seen in the orthodox mainstream schools of aqidah. Why is this? The underlying issue it that the attributes of action are multiple and they are related to created things (hence “action”). They are always going to be multiple. But the “essential” attributes are things like life, eternity, power. These are not necessarily different things, if you really think about it. Things like knowledge take a bit more head-scratching. Essentially, there is nothing in God apart from God. Why should there be anything else even in concept.

Christians confess three persons as God and so we could not possibly envisage three separated units of patchwork attributes which would be absurd, in monotheism at least. Rather the monotheistic model could only work if all the attributes were identical with a single entity which is itself the personal substance of all three. Any other conception would necessitate division between the three. This is why we get explicit attribute-identity statements in the gospels which are specific for Christianity, of all religions “God is love” (1Jn.4:8,16), “the Word was God” (Jn.1:3), “the Love of God is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which is given us” (Rom.5:5), as well as personal identity statements “I and the Father are one”. On the other hand, were the attributes truly no different from the essence and from each other, we should not really need to mention them, apart from as a way of satisfying our own creaturely form of language and understanding.

The Christian model does not encounter this problem because God is simply identical with the attribute of being God. In it, descriptions of God are not related to descriptions of the inter-relatedness of the attributes to the essence and to each other, rather they the descriptions of the Persons. The essence of God is existence itself, and synonymous with what it means to be God. There is no further distinction required of it. It might be argued that the presence of three Persons necessitates multiple eternal entities, but the premise of this objection is different to the premise to the objection to the the Islamic model. The premise for the objection against Christianity is that we do not experience multi-personal humanity, hence we should not also encounter multi-personal divinity. What we get in Islam is therefore not one version of monotheism, but several, and each with differing numbers of eternal entities.

What Christianity does is that it makes it possible that distinctions in God are made possible by personal relations rather than substantial. Those distinctions are not to do with anthropomorphic qualities, rather with the qualities that make God Eternal. That God is eternally begotten in love and that he eternally begets in love is the fundamental description of God because it is not a mere comment about God having life and being eternal, rather it is truly a description of the divine because it is telling us of the manner in which he is eternal, or even providing a reason for it. Further it does not deprive God of attributes that seem to relate to creation like those of willing, speaking, knowing, creating and loving, rather it is able to provide a description of all of these as emergent from those eternal attributes themselves and not alien to them. That is to say, our experience of these attributes in the divine is not an experience of what is alien to the divinity, rather a temporal expression of what is truly eternal- creation is a temporal begetting, just like loving and merciful interactions are temporal expressions of the eternal loving communion. The temporal experience of God is both related to and yet different from what he is transcendentally, and yet it is not a disconnect. This is what provides the harmonization which TM cannot achieve.

Because there is love as the basis for the personal relations, actions do not require to be external to God, because interaction is the essence of God himself. We are able to ascribe an essential attribute to God that is an interaction, or an interactive attribute. Because each of the persons are equal and consubstantial, they all possess that attribute in an identical manner without dividing or differentiating it “between” themselves”. God’s essence is an interaction and we have no need to make a substantial distinction between the two in order for God to have the capacity to interact. This itself is an incredible situation- if we do not presume the necessity of creation, we have just described a fully independent and active deity, simple in form with no complexity and therefore seemingly a perfect model for monotheism.

Only Christianity truly says anything about God at all

Christianity requires the acceptance of only ONE fact about the Nature of God, and a further fact that relates to his interaction with Creation. With regards to the former, that one God can be tri-personal, and with regards to the latter, that God can become his creation. Every other belief of Christianity is an entailment of these two. And yet, out of all the world religions, only Christianity truly says something about God at all.

Some religions might appear simple when in fact they merely achieve an illusion of simplicity by providing no facts about the Nature of God. For example, the only positive assertion that Islam makes with regards to the Nature of God is that there is indeed a God. With regards to God’s interaction with Creation, all Islam says is that God forgives sin. There is no indication as to whether this requires a real personal interaction with Creation in order that this be brought about. There is quite a lot of disagreement among Muslims as to whether or not God can even enter creation in the first place. With regards to describing God, all the assertions are in the form of superlatives like mercy, strength and knowledge, all of which in turn, are necessitated by the absurdity of their absence- how could God possibly be weak, irate and “thick”? Elaborating on these superlatives is merely devotional writing, and and entailment of the felt-duty to say positive things about God. Agnosticism with regards to the Nature of God and his mode of interaction with us is perfectly understandable. However agnosticism cannot assert that it is “better” than any other position, the arguments can only be based upon personal incredulity.

Appendices

Fakhry, from whose book we will be quoting quite a lot and using references, gives an outline of the main figures of the Mu’tazalites, who were of two main schools separated geographically:

“we might note here the names of its leading scholars, up to the rise of the Ash’arite school, which fell heir to it. They are traditionally subdivided into two branches: the Basrite and the Baghdadi. The following list gives the names of their leading representatives up to the middle of the tenth century. Thereafter it is the Ash’arites who dominate the theological scene. A major exception, however, is al-Qadi Abdu’l-Jabbar (d. 1025).

The Basrite Branch: Wasil b. ‘Ata’ (d. 748), ‘Amr b. ‘Ubaid (d. 762.), bu’l-Hudhail al-‘Allaf (d. 841 or 849), Abu Bakr al-Asamm (d. beginning of ninth century), Ibrahim al-Nazzam (d. 835-845) Ali al-Aswari (contemporary of al-Nazzam), Mu’ammar b. ‘Abbad (contemporary of al-Nazzam), Hisham al-Fuwati (flourished during al-Ma’mun’s reign, 813-833), Abu Ya’qub al-Shahham (d. 847); ‘Abbad b. Sulayman (d. 864), ‘Amr b. Bahr al-Jahiz (d. 868), Abu Ali al-Juba’i (d. 915), Abu Hashim, son of al-Juba’i (d. 933).

The Baghdadi Branch: Bishr b. al-Mu’tamir (d. 825); Abo Musa al-Murdar (d. 841); Ja’far b. Mubashshir (d. 849); Thumama b. Ashras (d. 828); Al-Iskafi (d. 855); Ahmad b. Abi Du’ad (d. 855)
Abu’l Husain al-Khayyat (d. 902); Abu Qasim al-Balkhi al-Ka’bi (d. 931); ‘Abd al-Jabbar (d. 1025)”

(Fakhry, 65,66)

References

The references in the text are indicated by the name of the primary source author rather than the translator. It is only recently that some of the Muslim theological works have been edited and translated into English. These are the best sources that I have been able to access:

Adamson, Peter, Arabic Sciences And Philosophy, Vol. 13 (2003) p. 45-77. 2003 Cambridge University Press, Al-Kindi And The Mu‘tazila: Divine Attributes, Creation And Freedom.

Al-Ghazali, Moderation in Belief, tr. Alladin Yakub, University of Chicago Press London, 2013.

Fakhry, Majid, A History of Islamic Philosophy, Third edition 2004, Columbia University Press, New York.

Abrahamov, Binyamin. (1995). ‘The bi-lā kayfa Doctrine and its Foundations in Islamic Theology’.
Arabica 42: 365–79.

Al- Nasafi- Commentary on the Creed of Islam, Sa’d al-Din al-Taftazani on the Creed of Najm al-Din al- Nasafi, tr. Earl Edgar Elder, ed. AUSTIN P. EVANS, 1950, Columbia University Press, New York.

Al-Maturidi– The Book of Monotheism- Kitaab at-Tawhid: God and the Universe, A Manual of Sunni Theology by Shaykh Abu Mansoor al-Maturidi, translation and commentary by Sulaiman Ahmed (footnote p109 explains: the current manuscript of ‘Kitaab at-Tawheed is incomplete – which we know to be the case, but in this instance it lends credence to the idea that I posited earlier that this was never meant to be a book by Imam Maturidi but instead were notes taken from unstructured lectures that were later compiled into a book by his students).

Abu Hanifa- Imam Abu Hanifa’s Al-Fiqh al-Akbar Explained By Abu ’l-Muntaha al-Maghnisawi, with Selections from ‘Ali al-Qari’s Commentary Including Abu Hanifa’s Kitab al-Wasiyya. Compiled and Translated with an Introduction by Abdur-Rahman ibn Yusuf.

The Mecca.com store gives this introduction to the book: “This translation of Al-Fiqh al-Akbar is an unprecedented contribution to the subject of ‘aqida in English. A lucid rendering, unhampered by sterile literalism, it draws on a number of commentaries to unlock a subject that has been largely inaccessible to an English readership. This is due both to the subject’s complexity and the lack of reliable works in English. Combining Maghnisawi’s basic commentary with copious notes carefully selected from ‘Ali al-Qari’s super-commentary and the entire Kitab al-Wasiyya of Abu Hanifa, this edition promises to be an essential guide on the intellectual and rewarding journey through Islamic creed.” The book is essentially his commentary on Abu Hanifa’s Fiwh al-Akbar, with his also quoting from some of Abu Hanifa’s other works and from another commentor, Qari. The footnotes are by the translator Abdur-Rahman. I think Abu Hanifa’s direct quotes are red-lettered in the volume.

Abu ’l-Muntaha al-Maghnisawi was born in Magnisia (Maghnisa), a town in present-day western Turkey. Very little is known about his life. It is likely that he was born in the very early part of the eleventh century, given that his death was either in 1090/1679. Some sources state that he completed his commentary of Al-Fiqh al-Akbar in 989 ah or a year earlier. He was an accomplished jurist of the Hanafi school and a master in the science of Qur’an Recitation (muqri’).

Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, 3rd ed. Sabine Schmidtke, Oxford University Press, 2016.