Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence, and Constitutional Theory

by Duncan Black MacDonald

We can now return to the development of scholastic theology in the orthodox church at the hands of the followers of al-Ash‘ari. They had to fight their way against many and most differing opponents. At the one extreme were the dwindling Mu‘tazilites, passing slowly into comparatively innocuous heretics, and the growing party of unbelievers, philosophical and otherwise, open and secret. At the other extreme was the mob of Hanbalites, belonging to the only legal school which laid theological burdens on its adherents. The theologians, in this case, certainly varied as to the weight of their own anathemas against all kalam, but were at one in that they carried the bulk of the multitude with them and could enforce their conclusions with the cudgels of rioters. In the midst were the rival orthodox (pace the Hanbalites) developers of kalam, among whom the Mataridites probably held the most important place. Thus, the Ash‘arite school was the nursling as well as the child of controversy.

It was, then, fitting that the name joined, at least in tradition, with the final form of that system, should be that of a controversialist. But this man, Abu Bakr al-Baqilani the Qadi, was more than a mere controversialist. It is his glory to have contributed most important elements to and put into fixed form what is, perhaps, the most fantastic and daring metaphysical scheme, and almost certainly the most thorough theological scheme, ever thought out. On the one hand, the Lucretian atoms raining down through the empty void, the self-developing monads of Leibnitz, pre-established harmony and all, the Kantian “things in themselves” are lame and impotent in their consistency beside the parallel Ash‘arite doctrines; and, on the other, not even the rigors of Calvin, as developed in the Dutch confessions, can compete with the unflinching exactitude of the Muslim conclusions.

ASH‘ARITE METAPHYSICS

First, as to ontology. The object of the Ash‘arites was that of Kant, to fix the relation of knowledge to the thing in itself. Thus, al-Baqilani defined knowledge (ilm) as cognition (ma‘rifa) of a thing as it is in itself. But in reaching that “thing in itself” they were much more thorough than Kant. Only two of the Aristotelian categories survived their attack, substance and quality. The others, quantity, place, time and the rest, were only relationships (i‘tibars) existing subjectively in the mind of the knower, and not things. But a relationship, they argued, if real, must exist in something, and a quality cannot exist in another quality, only in a substance. Yet it could not exist in either of the two things which it brought together; for example, in the cause or the effect. It must be in a third thing. But to bring this third thing and the first two together, other relationships would be needed and other things for these relationships to exist in. Thus we would be led back in an infinite sequence, and they had taken over from Aristotle the position that such an infinite series backward (tasalsul) is inadmissible. Relationships, then, had no real existence but were mere phantoms, subjective non-entities. Further, the Aristotelian view of matter was now impossible for them. All the categories had gone except substance and quality; and among them, passion. Matter, then, could not have the possibility of suffering the impress of form. A possibility is neither an entity nor a non-entity, but a subjectivity purely. But with the suffering matter, the active form and all causes must also go. They, too, are mere subjectivities. Again, qualities, for these thinkers, became mere accidents. The fleeting character of appearances drove them to the conclusion that there was no such thing as a quality planted in the nature of a thing; that the idea “nature” did not exist. Then this drove them further. Substances exist only with qualities, i.e., accidents. These qualities may be positive or they may be negative; the ascription to things of negative qualities is one of their most fruitful conceptions. When, then, the qualities fall out of existence, the substances themselves must also cease to exist. Substance as well as quality is fleeting, has only a moment’s duration.

But when they rejected the Aristotelian view of matter as the possibility of receiving form, their path of necessity led them straight to the atomists. So atomists they became, and, as always, after their own fashion. Their atoms are not of space only, but also of time. The basis of all the manifestation, mental and physical, of the world in place and time, is a multitude of monads. Each has certain qualities but has extension neither in space nor time. They have simply position, not bulk, and do not touch one another. Between them is absolute void. Similarly as to time. The time-atoms, if the expression may be permitted, are equally unextended and have also absolute void—of time—between them. Just as space is only in a series of atoms, so time is only in a succession of untouching moments and leaps across the void from one to the other with the jerk of the hand of a clock. Time, in this view, is in grains and can exist only in connection with change. The monads differ from those of Leibnitz in having no nature in themselves, no possibility of development along certain lines. The Muslim monads are, and again are not, all change and action in the world are produced by their entering into existence and dropping out again, not by any change in themselves.

But this most simple view of the world left its holders in precisely the same difficulty, only in a far higher degree, as that of Leibnitz. He was compelled to fall back on a pre-established harmony to bring his monads into orderly relations with one another; the Muslim theologians, on their side, fell back upon God and found in His will the ground of all things.

ASH‘ARITE THEOLOGY

We here pass from their ontology to their theology, and as they were thorough-going metaphysicians, so now they are thorough-going theologians. Being was all in the one case; now it is God that is all. In truth, their philosophy is in its essence a scepticism which destroys the possibility of a philosophy in order to drive men back to God and His revelations and compel them to see in Him the one grand fact of the universe. So, when a darwish shouts in his ecstasy, “Huwa-l-haqq,” he does not mean, “He is the Truth,” in our Western sense of Verity, or our New Testament sense of “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” but simply, “He is the Fact”—the one Reality.

To return: from their ontology they derived an argument for the necessity of a God. That their monads came so and not otherwise must have a cause; without it there could be no harmony or connection between them. And this cause must be one with no cause behind it; otherwise we would have the endless chain. This cause, then, they found in the absolutely free will of God, working without any matter beside it and unaffected by any laws or necessities. It creates and annihilates the atoms and their qualities and, by that means, brings to pass all the motion and change of the world. These, in our sense, do not exist. When a thing seems to us to be moved, that really means that God has annihilated—or permitted to drop out of existence, by not continuing to uphold, as another view held—the atoms making up that thing in its original position, and has created them again and again along the line over which it moves. Similarly of what we regard as cause and effect. A man writes with a pen and a piece of paper. God creates in his mind the will to write; at the same moment he gives him the power to write and brings about the apparent motion of the hand, of the pen and the appearance on the paper. No one of these is the cause of the other. God has brought about by creation and annihilation of atoms the requisite combination to produce these appearances. Thus we see that free-will for the Muslim scholastics is simply the presence, in the mind of the man, of this choice created there by God. This may not seem to us to be very real, but it has, certainly, as much reality as anything else in their world. Further, it will be observed how completely this annihilates the machinery of the universe. There is no such thing as law, and the world is sustained by a constant, ever-repeated miracle. Miracles and what we regard as the ordinary operations of nature are on the same level. The world and the things in it could have been quite different. The only limitation upon God is that He cannot produce a contradiction. A thing cannot be and not be at the same time. There is no such thing as a secondary cause; when there is the appearance of such, it is only illusional. God is producing it as well as the ultimate appearance of effect. There is no nature belonging to things. Fire does not burn and a knife does not cut. God creates in a substance a being burned when the fire touches it and a being cut when the knife approaches it.

ETHICAL CONSEQUENCES