Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism pdf

IBN TAYMIYYA’S THEODICY OF PERPETUAL OPTIMISM – Book Sample

CONTENTS – IBN TAYMIYYA’S THEODICY OF PERPETUAL OPTIMISM

• Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………… xi
• Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… 1
• Chapter One: Worship, Religious Epistemology and Theological Jurisprudence
• Ibn Taymiyya as a Theological Jurist …………………………………………… 19
• The Centrality of Worshipping God Alone ……………………………….. 26
• The Correspondence of Reason and Revelation …………………………. 29
• On Knowing that God Exists and that He Alone should
• be Worshipped …………………………………………………………………………. 32
• The Methodology of Theological Jurisprudence ………………………… 46
• The Apologetic Quality of Ibn Taymiyya’s Theological
• Jurisprudence ……………………………………………………………………………. 68
• Chapter Two: God’s Wise Purpose, Perpetual Activity and
• Self-Sufficiency ……………………………………………………………………………… 70
• The Problematic of God’s Goodness and God’s
• Self-Sufficiency …………………………………………………………………………. 70
• Joseph Bell on God’s Wise Purpose and Self-Sufficiency
• in Ibn Taymiyya’s Theology ……………………………………………………… 72
• Ibn Taymiyya’s Classification of Views on Wise Purpose/
• Causality in the Will of God ………………………………………………….. 76
• The Ash≠arī Case against Causality in the Will of God:
• It Entails Imperfection and Origination in God, as well
• as an Infinite Regress ……………………………………………………………….. 78
• Ibn Taymiyya’s Case for a God Who Acts Perpetually for
• Wise Purposes and Creates from Eternity ……………………………… 80
• Ibn Taymiyya on God’s Voluntary Acts Subsisting in
• God’s Essence ……………………………………………………………………………. 95
• Ibn Taymiyya on God’s Sufficiency apart from the
• Worlds in the Exercise of Wise Purpose …………………………………. 97
• Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………. 101

INTRODUCTION

Theodicy and Ibn Taymiyya

The eminent Muslim jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) is well known for polemic against all manner of rational thought, whether the Neoplatonic philosophy of Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), the mystical speculation of Ibn ≠Arabī, or the Kalām theology of the Ash≠arīs and the Mu≠tazilīs. Furthermore, Ibn Taymiyya’s resolute adherence to the Qur±an, the Sunna and the Salaf (i.e. the pious early Muslims) is nearly legendary. Yet, scattered about in special- ized studies are hints that there is more to the shaykh than polemics and unyielding literalism.

While polemics and literalism are indeed prominent features of Ibn Taymiyya’s writing, it is growing ever more apparent that their import is not fully grasped without reference to a broader method and theological vision at work in his thought. Perhaps even more surprising is that Ibn Taymiyya shares with Ibn Sīnā and Ibn ≠Arabī, as well as with al-Ghazālī in his I!h±y≠āulūm al-dīn, a similar stance on one of the most fundamental questions of monotheistic theology, that of theodicy.

The term theodicy as used in modern western philosophy of religion indi- cates the attempt to explain why a good, just and all-powerful God created a less than perfect world. The term is not indigenous to the Islamic tradition, and a major current within the tradition—the voluntarism of Ash≠arī Kalām theology—rejects the question of theodicy as meaningless. God’s unfettered will, sufficiency apart from the world, and exclusive power preclude asking why God does this or that. God is not limited by any necessity of reason, and His acts require no deliberation, rational motive or external cause. Thus, God’s creation of injustice, unbelief and other evils is not susceptible to any explanation except that God wills it.

Despite this, theodicy and its division into two basic kinds—the best- of-all-possible-worlds theodicy, also known as optimism, and the free-will theodicy—prove useful as analytical shorthand for sorting through other theological  currents  in  the  Islamic  tradition ((I owe this conceptual distinction to Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 179, and passim)).   Mu≠tazilī  Kalām  theology provides the primary instance of an Islamic free-will theodicy. While the….

The Centrality of Worshipping God Alone

An incident related by Ibn Taymiyya’s biographer Ibn ≠Abd al-Hādī (d. 744/1343) points to the centrality of worship (≠ibāda) in his vision of Islam. In the year 707/1307, on Friday, 30 Rabī≠ al-Awwal, Ibn Taymiyya went to a mosque in Cairo for the noon prayer. Some people asked him to teach, but he said nothing. He only smiled and looked around.

Then someone quoted the Quranic verse, “God made a covenant with those who were given the Scripture that you make it clear to the people and not conceal it” (Q. 3:187).

At that, Ibn Taymiyya got up, quoted the first sura of the Quran, the Fātiha, and proceeded to speak in its fifth verse, “You alone we worship; You alone we ask for help,” and the meaning of worship and asking for help until the mid-afternoon asr prayer call, a period of perhaps two or three hours ((Ibn Abd al-Hādī, Al-Uqūd al-durriyya, 255.)).  Since Ibn ≠Abd al-Hādī does not provide further details of Ibn Taymiyya’s long discourse, we can only imagine what he might have said.

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