Appendix 1: The Qur’an as GOD’s Speech (5)

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Schematically, Al-Ghazzali’s deification of the Qur’an could be portrayed thus:

Al-Ghazzali begins where all Muslims begin, namely the affirmation of the Qur’an as the Word of GOD (Q1) and AL-LAH as the Absolutely One, Eternal GOD (A1). Let us look at what transformations he requires to move from A1 to A2, from Q1 to Q2, and from A2 and Q2 to QA, and whether they were justified.

From A1 to A2:             Reading the Qur’an, we soon encounter AL-LAH as a Single, Speaking, Aware, and Powerful Super-Personality Who is both One in Himself and personally engaged with us, His creatures. He is not just any thing or concept, but more of a person than you or I, and clearly breaks the bounds of what philosophy can say about Him. To reframe Him as an Essence with attributes, we need to set aside this overwhelming impression of Personality and break Him down into what Aristotle describes as an eternal unmovable substance. For substances are the first of existing things.

When I interact with you, I cannot conceptually convert you into a thing with attributes such as speaking and knowing unless I first objectify you. I ignore your inconvenient presence as an independent, feeling subject and place your substance under my own more powerful magnifying glass to determine what you are made of. Substance equals essence, according to Aristotle, and essence implies predicates, such as unity and being in the case of God. This is the analytical tool Al-Ghazzali needs to establish his list of co-eternals, such as knowledge, life, power, will, speech, audition, and vision. Most of these are derived from His Names, such as Al-‘Alim, Al-Hayy, Al-Basir, and As-Sami’, while will and speech are inferred from verses that describe His actions.

By using these Names, AL-LAH never implies that there are things such as attributes attached to Him. Rather these Names are used to describe Himself Alone. And if we are content to use His Names only, we will never stray into believing that He is in any way divisible. Likewise, whether I call you by your first name or your family name or your nickname, it is clearly understood that these names all refer to exactly the same person and do not effect any division in who you are, nor are they entities on their own. You and I are partible creatures, but that is not because of the various names we have.

This, however, is not good enough for Al-Ghazzali. To achieve his list of attributes, he is compelled to convert Al-‘Alim, the Knowing, a qualifying adjective and one of GOD’s Names, into ‘ilm, Knowledge, which is a noun. He does the same for Al-Mutakallim, the Speaking, another Name of GOD (but not in the Qur’an, nor in the traditional list of 99 Names), converting that into Speech. He does the same for Al-Hayy (from Living to Life), Al-Basir (from Seeing to Sight), and As-Sami’ (from Hearing to Audition).

Can we say that His Names are attributes? If we do so (reluctantly, and with the utmost caution) we must understand that they are not entities in themselves. We may say that He is Speaking or The Speaker, but can we say that He is Speech? No, but Al-Ghazzali carries on regardless. Once they are converted into nouns other than Who He is Himself, they also become things that are coeternal with GOD. If we are intent on maintaining GOD’s Unicity, this conversion is superfluous. But if, like Al-Ghazzali, we are intent on a multiplicity in GOD’s Presence, where He can provide pre-existent places for these coeternal things, then such a conversion is indeed necessary.

The result is a new conception of GOD as an Eternal Essence with eternal attributes – something like the Christian Father with the Son and Holy Spirit. This essence-with-attribute combination conforms, as we have seen, to Aristotle’s idea of a substance or a thing with its predicates. But then we read:

His unlikeness is not contradicted by His Names, but rather emphasized, for He hears and sees in ways that are inseparable from His Infinite Being. He is The Hearer and The Seer to emphasize that when we use or mention these gifts, which He has mercifully bestowed on us, we may be reminded of their origins in Him as aspects of His Indivisible Awareness. The Aristotelian concept of GOD as a thing or substance is rejected explicitly in this verse, and throughout the Qur’an, which affirms His being transcendently beyond what we ascribe to Him, such as a likeness to things.

From A2 to QA:           Having assumed that envisioning AL-LAH as an Essence with eternal attributes does no harm to our faith in the Unicity of GOD, Al-Ghazzali can launch into the seemingly easier task of designating speech as one of those attributes. But it is in arguing for this point that he reveals the flaw in his theology.

First of all, he quietly passes over the salient distinction between Al-Mutakallim (Speaker) and Kalam (Speech). Are they the same? They cannot be, for the former is describing GOD-as-Subject, while the latter is the name of an object, produced by that subject. He admits as much, in his Tenth Principle above, by arguing that we cannot have one without the other, that for every actor, such as a speaker, a corresponding act must be admitted as inseparable from that actor. If the actor is eternal, then his act is likewise eternal. This argument would be unnecessary if actor and act were in fact the same; the transition from Speaker to Speech could then pass without comment. But by taking pains to explain their connection, Al-Ghazzali is effectually proving the significance of their difference. They are not the same, but they are, he says, nonetheless inseparable.

His principle, in his own words, is that Speech, standing on its own, is pre-existent, and so are all His attributes. Consider, then, this list of Names he fails to mention: Al-Khaliq (The Creator), Al-Bari’ (The Originator), Al-Musawwir (The Shaper), Al-Qabid (The Withholder), Al-Khafid (The Abaser), Al-Mudhill (The Humiliator), Al-Mubdi’ (The Initiator) Al-Mu’id (The Repeater), Al-Mumit (The Death-Dealer), Al-Muqaddim (The Advancer), Al-Mu’akhkhir (The Delayer), Al-Muntaqim (The Avenger), Al-Mani’ (The Denier), Ad-Darr (The Distresser), and Al-Badi’ (The Innovator). If he considers speech a pre-existent attribute, then so are creation, origination, shape, withholding, abasement, humiliation, initiation, repetition, advancement, delay, vengeance, denial, distress, and innovation. All of these are derived from established Names of GOD, and some of them, such as Creator, Originator, Shaper, Avenger, and Innovator, are inscribed in the Qur’an itself. (Neither Speaker nor Speech, on the other hand, are explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an as His Names.)

It is patently ludicrous to assert that creation, origination, abasement, distress, innovation, etcetera are pre-existent and coeternal with GOD’s Essence. If we accept GOD’s Names as signs of what GOD can do in time, rather than what He eternally is, has, or does, then these Names pose no problem for any serious theologian. But Al-Ghazzali stumbles further into obvious error by positing a triad of eternal entities: 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.

As I said before, this does look like common sense on the surface. It certainly applies to things and actions of this world by worldly actors. This type of reasoning, however, is demonstrably false in GOD’s case. Not only is no thing like unto Him, but we simply do not know how Eternal, Infinite Divinity acts in time and space. That is precisely why Names are all He gives us; they are indicators of what is vaguely identifiable for us, not what He actually is.

Al-Ghazzali has, by his analogies, almost literally murdered a proper appreciation of what it is to be AL-LAH. If we use the example of murderer (subject), murder (action), and murdered (object) as mutually dependent entities to argue for the eternity of not only the Speaker (subject), but also of His speech (action), and what is spoken or who is spoken to (object), then for Al-Mumit (The Death-Dealer), one of GOD’s eternal Names, we must posit killing or dying (action) and the dead (object) as His eternal attributes. Either the dead themselves are not dead, for they are eternally with Him, or He Himself is dead, as death and the dead are inseparable from Him. We can go on to list other Names and discover what an utter travesty this type of reasoning has become, particularly in light of another of His Names, the Independent – for verily AL-LAH is Independent of the worlds (Q3:97). His independence is directly related to the fact that He is eternal, unaffected by change and what is changed by Him, while all other things, including known things and murder victims, are dependent on knowers and murderers.

Finally, when action and the object of action are necessarily coeternal with the subject, as speech is said to be coeternal with the Speaker, and as knowledge and what is known inseparable from the Knower, we discover that for GOD to be an Eternal Knower, according to Al-Ghazzali, He must have not only eternal knowledge but also eternal objects of knowledge. By this view, the Pre-Existent Creator does not actually create, for not only creation but His creatures are pre-existent. He is the Originator, and yet He is not, for the objects of His origination are eternal like Him. Not only does He cause death, but to be the Death-Dealer He also depends on death, which He then assigns to the eternally dead. And so on into silliness on a galactic scale.

There is, in short, no end to the folly in this seemingly small step of making His speech eternal because being a Speaker requires it. Rather than wallow further in this shame and confusion, let us step back and state succinctly what the obvious solution to this dilemma is.

AL-LAH as GOD-the-Subject is unqualified, unknowable, and unnameable. That we might ‘know’ Him as GOD-the-Object, He has revealed His Names. These Names do not in any way define Who He is, what He has, or how He acts; rather they are merely indicators of how his Indivisible Personality appears or should appear to us. They delineate the boundaries of acceptable discourse concerning Him. Any qualities He is said to have, such as ‘Good’, ‘Knowledge’, ‘Speech’, and so on are qualia; they are not entities in themselves, but various descriptions of His One Light. When we have AL-LAH as the One True Noun, then all His other Names ‘serve’ as adjectives. ‘Speaking’ should be rephrased as ‘The Speaking GOD’ or at the very most ‘GOD the Speaker’ instead of converting its adjectival status into a separate noun, Speech, and giving it the illicit status of an attribute. In this way, we maintain His Unicity while identifying what we call His acts in the world without mediating substances or things. He Alone can ‘act’ in this way. That is part of what it means to be GOD.

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