One of the reasons the identity of Christ posed a problem for Christians was the intellectual milieu in which it arose, which was dominated by the philosophy of Aristotle. When Islamic theologians first began to debate their opponents about the nature of GOD and His relationship with His creation, they found that the groundwork for such disputes had already been laid out for them in Aristotelian terms. Even thinkers such as Al-Ghazzali, who was critical of the carelessness and impiety that philosophy could lead to, felt constrained to frame their polemics in the style of their adversaries, for want of alternative terms and concepts.
In his Metaphysics and other works1, Aristotle’s primary concern is his inquiry into substance. One might say that his entire philosophy revolves around this concept “in virtue of the fact that they are the entities which underlie everything else, and that everything else is either predicated of them or present in them.” (Categories, Book 1, Chapter 5 (2b)) In Physics, Book 1, Chapter 2 (185a), he says, “For none of the others [i.e. quantity and quality] can exist independently; substance alone is independent: for everything is predicated of substance as subject.” More emphatically in Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 1 (1069a), Aristotle lays out the basic framework of his ontology: “The subject of our inquiry is substance; for the principles and the causes we are seeking are those of substances. For if the universe is of the nature of a whole, substance is its first part; and if it coheres merely by virtue of serial succession, on this view also substance is first, and is succeeded by quality, and then by quantity. At the same time these latter are not even being in the full sense, but are qualities and movements of it . . . Further, none of the categories other than substance can exist apart. And the early philosophers also in practice testify to the primacy of substance; for it was of substance that they sought the principles and elements and causes.”
Aristotle asserts that “it is to that which is one with a thing or substance, as also to substance itself, that ‘individuality’ and ‘being’ are deemed to belong in the fullest sense.” (On Sophistical Refutations, Chapter 7 (169a)) This equivalence of thing or substance is not accidental; virtually all of his examples of substances are material things. Plato’s Ideas, therefore, (and my Absolutes) are not things. “If, then, no universal can be a substance, as has been said in our discussion of substance and being, and if being itself cannot be a substance in the sense of a one apart from the many (for it is common to the many), but is only a predicate, clearly unity also cannot be a substance; for being and unity are the most universal of predicates.” (Metaphysics, Book X, Chapter 2 (1053b)) He goes on to say “That the one, then, in every class is a definite thing,” (Metaphysics, Book X, Chapter 2 (1054a)).
Things are literally essential to Aristotle’s discussion of substances. “Each thing itself, then, and its essence are one and the same in no merely accidental way, as is evident from both the preceding arguments and because to know each thing, at least, is just to know its essence, so that even by the exhibition of instances it becomes clear that both must be one.” (Metaphysics, Book VII, Chapter 6 (1031b)) Furthermore, “essence belongs to substances either alone or chiefly and primarily and in the unqualified sense.” (Metaphysics, Book VII, Chapter 5 (1031a))
We have, then, in Aristotle, a fundamentally materialistic, thing-centred view of reality, in which essence = thing = substance. His disquisition, however much it meanders (but the works we have in his name are lecture notes, and so the fault in composition may not be his), is overwhelming in its thoroughness and minuteness. There can be little doubt as to why his intellect towered over not only the Classical world and Medieval Europe but also nascent Islamic philosophy. And it did not stop at philosophy; he had this to say as well: “we must assert that it is necessary that there should be an eternal unmovable substance. For substances are the first of existing things, and if they are all destructible, then all things are destructible.” (Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 6 (1071b)) He then works his way up to his description of God, and concludes his demonstration of the necessity of a First Mover by saying “It is clear then from what has been said that there is a substance which is eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible things.” (Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 7 (1073a)) This idea of God as a substance – in other words, a thing – would have profoundly detrimental effects upon the formulation of theological doctrines in Islam.
In his Ihya ‘Ulumid-Din, Al-Ghazzali provides the standard ‘Ashari defence of orthodoxy, including the belief in a Qur’an that is, like God, eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible things. In the following passage2, we can see how he employs the concept of essence to facilitate this transformation both in AL-LAH and in the Qur’an:
Sixth: that GOD, the Transcendent and Most High, is a Speaker by means of speech, which is a characteristic that is founded upon His Essence, without sound or letter. His speech does not resemble the speech of any other thing, just as His Existence does not resemble any other thing. Real Speech is speech of the self. Sounds are broken down into letters as indicators of meaning, just as movements and gestures are on occasion. . . . If it is understood that He has a single knowledge, by which He knows all existents, then understand [another] single attribute of the Essence, and that is speech by which is meant all that expressions indicate.
And if it is understood that the existence of the seven heavens and the existence of Paradise and Hell are written down on a small sheet of paper, retained within an atom-sized particle of the heart, and that all of that is seen within the confines of the cornea without the essences of the heavens and the earth, Paradise, and Hell actually occupying the eye, the heart, and the page, then understand the existence of speech that is recited by the tongue, retained by the heart, and written in texts without the essence of that speech occupying them. If the essence of speech was actually present on a page of the Book of God, then the Essence of God the Most High would be present in the writing of His Name on the page, and there too would appear the essence of the Fire by writing its name upon the page, and so would burn it.
When Aristotle declared, as cited above, that Each thing itself, then, and its essence are one and the same, he certainly could not have imagined the lengths to which Al-Ghazzali would go with that equivalence. We are to understand from the above quotation that speech is no longer something that is heard, read, or memorized, but is essentially abstracted from its manifestations to the realm of Real Speech, which for God means a kind of divine internal monologue, as a characteristic that is founded upon His Essence. Note how he distinguishes in the last sentence between the essence of speech, which is not present on a page, and the Essence of God, which is not present in the writing of His Name on the page. By this he shows us that God and His Speech are two different things – an issue to which I will return.
1 Aristotle, from Volume 8 of the Great Books of the Western World. Specific references are cited in the text.
2 Al-Ghazzali, Ihya ‘Ulumid-Din, Book of Worship, Foundations of Doctrine, Chapter 2, Section 3, Second Pillar, Sixth Principle
The GOD You Already Know 