To protect the Qur’an from attacks and place it beyond doubt, Islamic theologians have resorted, as we see Al-Ghazzali doing here, to ‘making room’ for it in God’s eternal presence. This requires a dual process of conceptual extension, like two distant nerve cells reaching out with their axons to close the synaptic gap between them and establish contact. The gap between what is meant by “God” and what is meant by “the Qur’an” is bridged on the one side by reifying God’s attributes as eternal things, and on the other side by etherealizing the Qur’an until it is just about the same as a divine attribute.
In the quotation above, the common conception of speech is broken down into its material components, such as written letters and spoken sounds, on the one hand, and their abstract or essence, on the other hand. All things, of course, could be similarly analyzed into their essences and their phenomenal manifestations, but speech gets this ‘dual nature’ treatment in order to extend the axon of its being (and hence the Qur’an’s being as well) towards Divinity. Real speech is speech of the self, or in this case the internal speech of GOD, which means that it is no longer what we actually read or hear, but has been raised to Him (which is the wording of ‘Isa’s ascension in Q4:158).
Let us see now how Al-Ghazzali has been building the bridge from God’s side3:
Tenth: that GOD, Most High, is Knowing by knowledge, Living by life, Powerful by power, Willing by will, Speaking by speech, Hearing by audition, and Seeing by vision, and the characteristics of these attributes are eternal. And he who says, ‘Knowing without knowledge’ is like him saying ‘Wealthy without wealth’, and ‘Knowledge without knowing’ and ‘Knowing without what is known’. For truly knowledge, what is known, and the knower are all necessary to each other, like murder, the murdered, and the murderer. Just as a murderer cannot be imagined without murder or a murder victim, nor a murder victim without a murderer or a murder, so likewise Knowing [or a Knower] cannot be imagined without knowledge, nor knowledge without what is known, nor what is known without a Knower. Rather these three are mutually implicated by reason. One part cannot be severed from any other part. Whoever allows for the Knower to be sundered from knowledge must allow its separation from what is known and the separation of knowledge from the One Who Knows, since there is no division among these qualities.
Superficially, this seems reasonable enough, but there is actually enough material here to sink an argument for the Qur’an being co-eternal with AL-LAH. We can put that aside momentarily, however, to observe what Al-Ghazzali is doing to our understanding of God’s nature.
What is the point of saying by what He is Knowing, Living, Willing, etcetera? Surely these Names are sufficient to tell us Who He is and how He acts. Obviously, Al-Ghazzali intends to exploit these adjectival Names to summon forth a corresponding set of nouns, which are then attached to GOD as attributes, or what Aristotle would call predicates, such as being and unity. AL-LAH is Eternal, and so must the Names be that reflect Who He eternally is. But names are not attributes, nor do they signify anything new or different in Him; they are nothing more than words describing One Reality. The holiness or beauty of GOD’s Beautiful Names depends solely on their Absolute Referent, not what they are in themselves. With the use of nouns, however, Al-Ghazzali is no longer naming GOD Himself, but entities He has, and by which He acts. In reality, of course, ‘He sees’ and ‘He sees by vision’ amount to the same thing, since ‘by vision’ is redundant. But for Al-Ghazzali such redundancy is necessary insofar as it allows him to plant Aristotelian things or substances where before there was only ineffable Unicity. Thanks to this displacement, God is no longer directly present to us in Who He is or what He does. He has become separate from sensible things, as Aristotle envisaged Him. And Eternity now has ‘features’, or room for ‘inserts’.
With the bridge of Speech thus extended from either bank, the divine and the temporal, Al-Ghazzali can complete his construction in the middle4:
Seventh: that Speech, standing on its own, is pre-existent, and so are all His attributes, it being impossible that He provide a place for what is temporal and subject to change. Rather what is necessary for the Essence is necessary, in terms of pre-existence, for the attributes, so neither do changes affect them nor do they give place to occurrences. He remains Pre-Existing, qualified by praiseworthy attributes, and remains Everlasting. Thus is He devoid of change in state, as what gives place to occurrences is not itself free of them. And what is not free of occurrences is itself occurring. The quality of occurrence is confirmed only for bodies, as they are affected by change and variation of attributes. How can their Creator take part with them in accepting change? Thus it is that His Speech is Pre-Existent, based on His Essence. What is newly occurring is only the sounds that indicate it.
3 Ibid., Tenth Principle
4 Ibid., Seventh Principle
The GOD You Already Know 