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The Unknowability of God in Al-Ghazali

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

David B. Burrell
David B. Burrell
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Extract

The main lines of this exploration are quite simply drawn. That the God whom Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship outstrips our capacities for characterization, and hence must be unknowable, will be presumed as uncontested. The reason that God is unknowable stems from our shared confession that ‘the Holy One, blessed be He’, and ‘the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth’, and certainly ‘Allah, the merciful One’ is one; and just why God's oneness entails God's being unknowable deserves discussion, though that will occur as we move along. The issue facing us is the one which preoccupied al-Ghazali: how does a seeker respond to that unknowability?

The root meaning of the Arabic word for ‘student’ (tawlib) means ‘seeker’, and that attitude of ‘seeking the face of God’, along with the indescribability of the face, will be presumed throughout our discussion. That's why we are struck with the clumsy term ‘unknowable’ rather than its more euphonious Greek form ‘agnostic’. For Western agnostics are such largely because they cannot find God sufficiently compelling, while they ‘would not have the impudence to claim to be atheists’ – as one contemporary seeker puts it. So theologians feel it necessary to enclose the term in quotation marks when discussing, say, Aquinas' ‘agnosticism’ regarding divinity. Yet a genuine unknowing does lie at the heart of the inquiry of the Jew, Christian or Muslim seeking after God; indeed, it is the unknowing which distinguishes a search for God from lusting after idols. So let us follow al-Ghazali in an effort to discover the lineaments of both search and seeker after an unknowable God.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 171 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

page 171 note 1 For the general point, see my Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986);Google Scholar for specifics regarding al-Ghazali, sec Shchadi, Fadlou, Ghazali's Unique Unknowable God (Leiden: Brill, 1964).Google Scholar

page 171 note 2 Jossua, Jean-Pierre, The Condition of the Witness (London: SCM, 1985), p. 14.Google Scholar

page 172 note 1 Madkour, Ibrahim, La place d'al Farabi dans l'Ecole philosophique musulmane (Paris: Librairie D'Amerique et d'Ouest, 1934), p. 14.Google Scholar For al-Farabi's development, see Al-Farabi on the Perfect State, ed. Walzer, Richard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985);Google Scholar for Ibn-Sina, see Avicenne: La melaphysique de Shifa, trans. Anawati, G. C. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1978, 1985)Google Scholar, al-Shifa: al-Ilāhiyat, ed. Madkour, I. and Anawati, G. (Cairo: Government Printing Office, 1960).Google Scholar

page 172 note 2 A fine translation of Ghazali can be found in Bergh, Simon van den (ed. and trans.), Averroes' Tahāfūt al-Tahāfūt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954);Google ScholarTahāfūt al-Falāsifa, ed. Dunya, S. (Cairo: al-Maaref, 1980).Google Scholar

page 173 note 1 Gardet, Louis, ‘Rencontre de la philosophie musulmane et de la pensée Patristique’, Revue Thomiste LV (1947), pp. 45–112, esp. pp. 87–94.Google Scholar And so set up the situation exploited by Averroes: cf. Gauthier, Leon, La théorie d'Ibn-Rochd sur les rapports de la religion et de la philosophie (Paris: Leroux, 1909).Google Scholar

page 173 note 2 Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).Google Scholar

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page 174 note 1 I shall be focussing on his mature development in the Ihya ‘alum al-din (Cairo, 1967)Google Scholar, an outline summary of which is available in Bousquet, G. H., Ghazali: vivification des sciences de la foi (Paris: Max Besson, 1955)Google Scholar, and relevant portions of which are supplied in McCarthy, Richard, Freedom and Fulfillment (Boston: Twayne, 1980)Google Scholar, Appendix v. References to the Ihya will be by Book, bayan (or explication) and page number, followed by Bousquet (B) or McCarthy (M): for this reference, see Bk, III, bayan 3, p. 9;Google ScholarMcCarthy, 371 (= III, b. 3, p. 9;M 371).Google Scholar

page 175 note 1 On malakut, see Wensinck, A. J., ‘On the Relation between Ghazali's Cosmology and his Mysticism’, in Mededeelingen der Akademie van Wetenschappen LXXV (1933) 183–209Google Scholar, summarized and extended in ch. 3 of his La pensée de Ghazzali (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1940).Google Scholar

page 176 note 1 On the status of theology as a ‘subalternate science’ (or ‘form of knowledge’) see Aquinas, , Summa Theologiae, part I, question I (vol. 1 in Gilby, T. (ed.), London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1963)Google Scholar, also Chenu, M.-D., La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1957).Google Scholar

page 176 note 2 Jabre, Farid, La notion de certitude selon Ghazali (Paris: Vrin, 1958)Google Scholar shows just how superficial are the similarities with Descartes, as Ghazali adopts a ‘performative resolution’ to his problem (p. 126), ‘practicing the art of certitude’ (p. 130). Moreover, Ghazali characterizes his situation of radical doubt as an illness, rather than enjoin such doubt upon us all as a method.

page 177 note 1 Shehadi, Fadlou (ed.), al Maqṣad al-asnā fī Sharḥ ma'ānī asmā' Allāh al–Ḥusna (Beirut: Libraire Orientale, 1971)Google Scholar, relevant portions in McCarthy (note 8), Appendix IV.

page 171 note 2 Cf. Shehadi, (note 1), pp. 101–14.Google Scholar

page 171 note 3 Gardet, (note 3), pp. 153–96, esp. pp. 185–96.Google Scholar

page 171 note 4 Tahāfūt al-Falāsifa (note 2), discussion 8, pp. 180–92;Google ScholarBergh, van den, pp. 222 ff;Google Scholar also Shehadi, (note 1, p. 1), Pp. 41–2.Google Scholar

page 178 note 1 Makdisi, George, The Rise of Colleges (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), pp. 128 ff.Google Scholar

page 178 note 2 Confessions, Bk 10, ch. 6; on singular things and events as ikons for Ghazali, cf. Wensinck, , La pensée… (note 9), pp. 90–7.Google Scholar

page 178 note 3 Watt, W. Montgomery, Muslim Intellectual (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963), esp. his critical remarks at pp. 168–9.Google Scholar

page 179 note 1 Cf. Allen, Diogenes, Three Oulsiders: Pascal, Kierkegaard, Simone Weil (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1981).Google Scholar

page 180 note 1 For a critical assessment of Ghazali's venture into proving God's existence, see S. de Beaurecueil and G. C. Anawati, ‘Une preuve de l'existence de Dieu chez Ghazzali et S. Thomas’, MIDEO (= Melanges de l'Institut Dominicain des Etudes Orientales), III (1956), 207 58; for Ghazali's theodicy, see Ormsby (note 1, p. II).

page 180 note 2 Cf. Gilson, E., ‘Pourquoi S. Thomas a critiqué S. Augustin’, Archives d'hist docl. litt. du M-A, I (1926), 5 127.Google Scholar

page 180 note 3 See Lonergan, B. J., Grace and Freedom (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971), p. 98.Google Scholar

page 181 note 1 See Ormsby, Eric L., Theodicy in Islamic Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a thorough and illuminating presentation of the dispute over al-Ghazali's ‘best of all possible worlds’.

page 182 note 1 For Maimonides' and Aquinas' deeper unity on this issue where they manifestly divide, see my ‘Aquinas and Maimonides: A Conversation about Proper Speech’, Immanuel XVI (1983), 70–85.Google Scholar On ‘the distinction’, see Sokolowski, Robert, God of Faith and Reason (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982).Google Scholar I am especially grateful to Fadlou Shehadi for alerting me to the ambiguities present in Ghazali's many uses of 'aql, and have tried to incorporate our discussion into my text. James Kritzeck also helped me avoid some historical and cultural howlers. On the underlying issue of God's unknowability, see my Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986).Google Scholar