No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Christian and Muslim Theology as Represented by Al-Shahrastāni and St. Thomas Aquinas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Extract
So much attention has been concentrated on the doctrines on which Christians and Muslims differ that often it is not realized how closely their philosophical presuppositions agree on many matters. In the following pages, which form a brief comparison of Ash'arite theology as represented by al-Shahrastānī (d. 1153) in his Nihāyatu-l-Iqdām fī ‘ilmi’ l-kalām with Catholic theology as represented by St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) in his Summa contra Gentiles, an attempt is made to bring points of agreement into prominence.
The Summa contra Gentiles possesses such enormous value in itself that the primary object of its composition has been lost sight of. Yet the connexion between it and Islam is indissoluble. It was written at the request of the Master-General of the Dominicans, Raymund of Pinnaforte, with the express purpose of convincing the Muslims of Spain of the rational basis of Christianity and the errors of their own religion. In the second chapter of the Summa (quae sit auctoris intentio) St. Thomas particularly singles out Muhammadans. Jews, he says, can be refuted from the Old Testament; heretics from the New Testament; but Machomestitae et Pagani can only be convinced by natural reason. And it is to natural reason that he proceeds to appeal.
Though none was better equipped than St. Thomas to undertake an exposition of the Catholic Faith, it is, I think, clear that he felt himself at a disadvantage in writing against people whose books he could not read and of whom he knew only from the translations of others.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , October 1950 , pp. 551 - 580
- Copyright
- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1950
References
page 551 note 1 The Summa Philosophiae of al-Shahrastānī, Oxford, 1934.
page 551 note 2 See Miguel Asín, Homenaje a D. Francisco Codera, Zaragoza, 1904, p. 322.
page 551 note 3 He knew of some of the works of Algazel, Avicenna, Averroes, Alfarabius, and a few others.
page 552 note 1 Sale's Koran, p. xi.
page 555 note 1 See further, the translation of Ch. I of the Nihāya.
page 555 note 2 See my “Philosophy and Theology” in The Legacy of Islam (Oxford, 1932), and the literature cited there.
page 558 note 1 The word person is of course not used. It is more than strange that Shahrastānī, who knew a good deal about the Christian doctrine of three persons and one God (see his Milal), should be so perverse as to confine this discussion to the refutation of a theory which verges on polytheism. Possibly the explanation is that intellectual Muslims have always been uneasy when hypostases are mentioned, owing to the orthodox doctrine of the divine attributes; v. infra.
page 560 note 1 Many thousands in India believe that the Aga Khan, who claims to be a Muslim, is the incarnation of God. “Missionaries in your Highness's pay and acting under your instructions preach in every prayer-house that your Highness is the Almighty God, and that Divine worship is to be paid to you and to no one else.” (An Open Letter published by the Secretary of the Khoja Reformers’ Society, Karachi, 1927, quoted in The Moslem World, April, 1934.)
page 569 note 1 No attempt is made here or elsewhere to discuss the ultimate origin of Avicenna's theories. He confesses his great debt to Alfarabius, who depended on translations from Greek via Syriac. See further The Legacy of Islam, under “Philosophy and Theology”.
page 579 note 1 It is found in one of the later collections of tradition.