Appendix 1: The Qur’an as GOD’s Speech (6)

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From Q1 to Q2:             Our experience of the Qur’an, as with all texts, is multidimensional. While seeing letters on the page or hearing sounds in the air, we are extracting from these physical phenomena an immaterial series of meanings. Using Aristotle’s terminology, we are asked to consider the meanings to be the essence or substance of the Qur’an, and its written or spoken manifestations to be its predicates or accidents. For Aristotle, the essence is the thing itself, underlying whatever qualities, including being, unity, quantity, and quality, that are attributed to it. Al-Ghazzali confirms this: 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. A line is drawn through the Qur’an between what it essentially is, which is not present on the page, and what it appears to be in its broken-down state, namely written letters and audible sounds. We know where to see the letters or hear the sounds, but where is this essence of the Qur’an, the thing itself? The answer to that, of course, is obtained by following the transition from Q2 to QA.

But before we go there, how valid or significant is this division of the Qur’an between its essence and its non-essentials, between the immaterial reality and its physical expression? We have seen how Al-Ghazzali divides AL-LAH into His Essence and His Attributes on the analogy of how material things can be analyzed into essence and attributes. This dissection is unbefitting the Transcendent Unicity of GOD. But in the case of things that are not GOD, such a division may be appropriate. The human being has a material component, which is created, and a spiritual component, or ruh, which is from GOD’s own Breath or Spirit, constituting His ‘aspiration’ for us. Ordinary objects have not only physical / material elements but also symbolic meanings attached to them. Nothing is devoid of meaning. Words, likewise, could be said to have bodies, namely how they sound when spoken or look when written, and souls, i.e. what they signify or indicate. So it is conceivable that the Qur’an has a similar structure, being partly material and partly mental.

This composite nature of the Qur’an should not be controversial; Al-Ghazzali himself characterizes GOD’s Speech in this fashion. Even proponents of the view that the Qur’an is uncreated had to concede that anything involving a succession of components, such as one letter or sound following another, is hadith, temporal, and therefore created. To assert that the Qur’an itself was uncreated, therefore, they had to be especially emphatic about the essence of the Qur’an as real speech.

To understand the magnitude of this bifurcation, let us return to the analogy of the human being. Human bodies are clearly created; creation is the term GOD uses for bringing material substances into being. But the spirit breathed into them is said to be His Spirit (Q32:9). One could argue that, by being His, this spirit is uncreated. Nonetheless, the whole human being and the whole of humanity are said to be created. No theologian disputes the term, despite the undoubted presence of GOD’s Spirit in this composite being.

Why, then, were orthodox theologians from as early as the second century of the Islamic era (about 700 C.E. onwards) so concerned to deny that the Qur’an, likewise, was created? Why did sober, competent scholars like Al-Ghazzali feel compelled to undergo the intellectual contortions that are so painful to see in the incongruities quoted above?

When we reread the following quotation, it becomes apparent what the problem for them was: 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. If the Qur’an were created, it would be just like a body, affected by change and variation and newly occurring. Admitting this would, in their opinion, totally undermine faith in the Qur’an as the Word of GOD.

AL-LAH does not explicitly state that the Qur’an is created, for the passive verb “created” (khuliqa) is specifically used for bodily phenomena, not for books, which are written, spoken, or inspired. In saying it was uncreated, its defenders clearly feared the implication of its being labelled created, i.e. that it was solely material. For them, there was no third choice between a created, material thing and an immaterial aspect of GOD Himself. How could something be both immaterial and created? In posing such a question, they forgot that angels are made of light, which is one name for the Qur’an itself (Q5:15, 7:157), and that even human creatures have an immaterial aspect, namely GOD’s Spirit. Assuming, however, that there is a strict separation between material and immaterial substances, the Qur’an’s defenders wanted it to be on God’s side of that divide.

At a time when the canon of statutory traditions (ahadith) was being established, a text of even greater importance could not be seen as open to the intervention of fallible human beings. The collection of ahadith, because of their obviously human provenance, would always contain elements of uncertainty and grounds for dispute. The scholarly community, the arbiters of faith for the Muslim world, therefore required something that would forever be unshakably true, a reference text that required no further reference for its validity. The Qur’an’s own assertions that it was such a text, free of doubt (Q2:2), gave them the courage to proceed, but not the absolute assurance that would have sufficed for them if they had taken such an assertion at face value. They needed to elevate the Qur’an, not by its own statements of what it was, but by their theories, to the realm of the Divine and make it an attribute of God Himself. In this way, they hoped to put the authority of the Qur’an as God’s Speech beyond change and challenge.

From Q2 to QA:           In the transition from A2 to QA, we have seen how Al-Ghazzali set the stage for the deification of the Qur’an. He first posited a host of eternal attributes that were somehow given a ‘place’ in His Presence, and then singled out speech as one of them, ignoring the obvious objection that GOD’s Speech is what He produces, not what He Himself is, and hence is analogous to creation and other temporal products of the Divine.

If ‘The Speaker’, as a Name of GOD, is eternal, what is wrong with making Speech eternal too? Consider, as an analogous case, ‘The Creator’ and Creation. GOD is eternally both Speaker and Creator, but this does not mean that He eternally speaks and eternally creates. Rather both actions are voluntary and occasional. They are intentionally directed towards particular objects or words at particular times and places. When we refer to GOD as the Creator, we are describing His eternal capacity to create. He does not need to be constantly creating to be The Creator. Such a need would constitute a dependence, while AL-LAH is transcendently and absolutely Independent. We are constantly reminded that He does not create in all ways at all times, but that He selectively creates – And what your Master wills and chooses that which He creates (Q28:68) – that even the universe is created for a specific period – AL-LAH did not create the heavens and the earth and that which is between them other than with truth and an appointed term. (Q30:8) – and that His creation is willed and timed:

From this verse – and there are many like it – we clearly see that His speech is likewise voluntary (intends) and occasional (When). Creating and speaking here are not actions clearly distinguished as being performed on different objects or at different times. Rather His determining and speaking are cited together as the single method He uses to create. He is not always speaking; that would be too mechanical and mindless, like the Neoplatonic emanation of a Being Who is overflowing with incessant, undirected chatter. That is not what we mean by speaking to someone, nor is it what GOD means in speaking to us. AL-LAH is transcendently free of such an imputation. Rather He is free to speak when He wills and to be silent when He wills:

Could we not say, however, as Al-Ghazzali does in his Seventh Principle, that although the products of GOD’s Speech are manifested temporally in what we hear or see, His Real Speech is a pre-existent intention that is coeternal with His Essence? The example he employs (not quoted above) is that of a father who intends for his son to be educated even before his son is born. The real Qur’an, according to this simile, is not the partible, variegated text we know it to be, but the invisible and pre-existent Thought of GOD from which the countless Words of GOD spring forth like a tree from a seed.

From this idea, however, only problems grow, like weeds. I am reminded of a verse that portrays this relationship:

The goodly word is, of course, the Word of GOD. Although roots and branches are singular in the original Arabic of this verse, we speak of both as plural in English. Unlike the image we might have of GOD’s Real Speech as a heavenly thought with manifold expressions here on earth, this Qur’anic tree is growing right way up, from the ground. Its task is to connect heaven and earth, which is what GOD’s Words do: by binding utterances and meanings together they become organic wholes. No matter how lofty a tree may be, it requires a firm footing in the soil of concrete things.

Notice also how the goodly word refers to the whole tree – a concrete, partible thing, rather than some intangible extract or essence of it. The Qur’an almost always refers to itself as a text whose locality, specificity, and multiplicity are integral to its identity. In a few places, we see its heavenly origin affirmed, such as its being on a guarded tablet (Q85:22) – one proof, by the way, that GOD Himself is protecting it from illicit changes. References to vaguely comprehensible entities – Tablet, Pen, Throne, Footstool, etcetera – convey a sense of mysterious grandeur, but as paraphernalia, however ethereal, they are certainly not identical with GOD or superadded to His Oneness. And nowhere does the Qur’an divide itself into an ethereal Real Speech and a tenuously connected set of worldly accidents. It is, rather, that one organic whole symbolized by the goodly tree.

An organic whole, such as a tree, is nonetheless a ‘thing’ – finite, partible, and non-eternal. We may say that it has, like all things, a single essence, namely its meaning or nature. That essence, however, is not in pre-existent isolation as some divine attribute, but is instead inextricably involved in all its manifestations as a composite being.

A few examples from the Qur’an should suffice to prove the essential complexity that is its nature:

The Qur’an takes time to reveal and to recite, and is not amenable to the instantaneous delivery we would expect if it were essentially one Thought.

There are many references to the Qur’an confirming previous revealed books, some of which are listed sequentially in Q9:111: A promise, incumbent on Him in the Taurat, the Injil, and the Qur’an. The Qur’an constitutes one of a series of books in temporal order, and hence is newly occurring if we mean by that something that had a starting point in time.

But once occurring, is it affected by change?

The answer, of course, is yes, it can be changed (as Q16:101 also attests), but only by the One Who has revealed it. He ends this verse with the same reference to His Absolute Power that concluded His capacity to destroy the Messiah, son of Maryam, and his mother, and all who are on earth (Q5:17).

What is the guarantee, then, that the Qur’an has not been changed since its revelation? I will address that issue shortly. It suffices now to realize that the Qur’an is a finite revelation and not infinite in time and space as GOD’s attributes would have to be. It consists of parts, and was deliberately made to be so, unlike the impartible, eternal entity that supposedly occupies a place in GOD’s Presence. Speech is an act or product of AL-LAH, and the Qur’an is but one instance of the countless variety of Words He produces in other scriptures, his innumerable acts of creation, each one originated by ‘Be!’, and His decrees that call an end to affairs and pass judgement on His creatures.

Finally, Absolute Unicity does not have ‘contents’. (To deal with what is inherently temporal, AL-LAH does not absorb things or emanate them as extensions of Himself, but rather creates and speaks them into being. His immanence never becomes an identity of God and world as propounded in pantheism.) Al-Ghazzali cannot say that AL-LAH is composed of His attributes; rather he believes that they somehow co-exist in His Presence. How they share in His Eternity without being parts of Him or partners is never made clear. Each attribute is single, as Al-Ghazzali says, and thus cannot contain things that would vitiate its singular, eternal nature. 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. He further states, what is necessary for the Essence is necessary, in terms of pre-existence, for the attributes.

* Why does Al-Ghazzali refer to God’s attribute of knowledge more often than others? The choice of this particular attribute may not be a conscious one, but it does represent a way by which he can more easily render God intelligible to us and amenable to having attributes ‘nested’ as coeternal with His Eternal Being.

This is because, unlike attributes such as power, creation, and even speech that we can readily imagine as expressions of a Unitary Being, knowledge, sight, and hearing evoke images of receiving impressions from the outside. It is hard for us to imagine the contents of knowledge etcetera being other than additions to the one receiving them. Knowledge appears to be meaningless without its contents, which are necessarily multiple. Hence a Knowing God would be, according to Al-Ghazzali, One Who acquires and, in some sense, gains by multiplicity, making knowledge the ‘model’ attribute that paves the way, as Al-Ghazzali does, for others.

This inference is, of course, incompatible with His Absolute Unicity. How, then, does GOD ‘know’ things? Just as He is the Creator of all things even before they exist, so is He the Knower of all things even before they exist. Knowledge and creation are, in fact, two phases of the same act; His knowing a particular thing in time is concomitant with His creating it in time. His Knowledge is thus a form of Power, expressed on the spot, rather than impressed in the way we believe we know things.

(This principle of verum factum, by which knowing is coincident and identical with creation, or that truth becomes so by making it, was famously propounded by the philosopher Giambattista Vico.⁵)

That is why, in describing the act of creating a thing, He says that He speaks to it (as His Pre-Existent Knowledge partially manifests itself in such speech) and then (as logically subsequent, but in fact simultaneously) it comes into being. (Q19:35)

But the Qur’an does have contents; not only its physical expressions but even its meanings are multiple: in it are verses of established meaning, which comprise the basis of the Book, and others allegorical (Q3:7). It literally means “recitation”; how do we ‘recite’ some ethereal essence that has but one meaning? How can any eternal entity be free of multiplicity and partibility, on the one hand, and yet consist of an essence and accidents, on the other hand, and be ‘sent down’ at various times and places, with numerous references to concrete objects and events? Eternal Unicity will not allow it.

⁵ Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume VI, p. 156

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