Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- List of texts and abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I AL-GHAZĀLĪ'S ATTACK ON PHILOSOPHY
- 1 How did God create the world?
- 2 Immortality and the active intellect
- 3 Can God know particulars?
- PART II REASON V. REVELATION IN PRACTICAL REASONING
- Further reading
- Glossary
- Index of passages
- General index
3 - Can God know particulars?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- List of texts and abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I AL-GHAZĀLĪ'S ATTACK ON PHILOSOPHY
- 1 How did God create the world?
- 2 Immortality and the active intellect
- 3 Can God know particulars?
- PART II REASON V. REVELATION IN PRACTICAL REASONING
- Further reading
- Glossary
- Index of passages
- General index
Summary
Al-Ghazālī's third charge of heresy takes this form:
The … question is their declaration: ‘God Most High knows universals, but not particulars.’ This also is out-and-out unbelief. On the contrary, the truth is that ‘there does not escape Him the weight of an atom in the heavens or in the earth’.
This interesting charge arises from the way in which philosophers distinguish between our knowledge and God's knowledge. From the point of view of religion, Islam is quite clear in teaching that God knows each and everything that exists in the temporal world; as one might expect, such knowledge is important for his decisions about the fate of human souls after death. In any case, the idea that God would create the world and then ignore it, or at least the corruptible and temporal pieces of it which we inhabit, is not an attractive idea to orthodox Islam. There can be little doubt what view the Qur'ān has of the nature of God's omniscience. Apart from the passage from XXXIV, 3 = X, 62 above, a much-quoted passage in theological works, there is also the suggestion at Ⅽ, 15 that God even knows thoughts: ‘We indeed created man and we know what his soul whispers within him and we are nearer to him than the jugular vein.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy , pp. 130 - 144Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001