RTS Papers / A Christian Encounter with Islam / Spring 2019
EXPRESSIONS OF VOLUNTARISM IN THE QURAN AND HADITH
In the infamous Satanic verses, after Muhammad at first made overture to the Quraysh by allowing homage to their three deities (Q53:19-21), Allah sent down a new revelation in his mercy. He can annul what Satan had suggested. Now this begins to raise questions about a wider reality in the Quran described in the doctrine of abrogation: namely, that Allah can, in general, supercede prior revelations with subsequent ones. We will come back to how this doctrine logically coheres with the eternal character of the Quran in the next section. First we must examine the main texts in the tradition that exalt Allah’s will above all.
At first glance it may seem that the Quranic statements are no different than biblical ascriptions of total sovereignty to God. For instance, “He does whatever He will” (Q85:16). We may compare this to our Psalm 115:3. However, when Allah “creates whatever he will” [having] “power over everything” (Q5:17), here the context includes destroying Christ if he so willed and refusing revelation to the other people of the book if he so willed. Moreover, torment in hell is eternal unless Allah wills otherwise in a particular case (Q11:106-107). Clearly there is something very different going on here.
Abrogation itself is taught in Q2:106, “Any revelation We cause to be superseded or forgotten, We replace with something better or similar. Do you [Prophet] not know that God has power over everything?”
Notice again the reason given for abrogation: the supremacy of Allah’s will.
In the case of a blind man who could not win glory in Allah’s cause, new provisions are given in a revised version of Q4:95. “Not equal are those of the believers who sit at home” became amended with the words “apart from those with an incapacity.” This change was confirmed by Sahih Al-Bukhari 6:118 [White, 272]. While some may answer something similar to the Christian doctrine of progressive revelation, this is not the same thing. The history of Muhammad’s revelation shows a constant flow of sudden revelations specifically addressing his needs or those he perceives of his community. It has all the look not merely of divine whims, but those of the prophet.
AN INCOHERENCE OF ETERNAL ATTRIBUTES
The Muslim view of Christ depends upon a variety of misconceptions about Sonship (Q4:171; 9:30), begottenness (Q5:17), and even who the “partners” (Q5:72-73, 116-117) are in our doctrine of the Trinity. It may be that these misunderstandings are species of a larger void in philosophical thinking. I do not mean that in any elitist way, as if the “Western mind” is more naturally suitable to this or that intellectual capacity. I am simply referring to some clues in Islamic theology proper about wrong roads that were taken. For instance, “Neither is He a substance, nor do substances exist in Him” [The Imam El-Ghazzali, in Zwemer, 13]. Indeed we would agree that substances do not exist in God, nor that he is in any sense divisible. There is evidence, however, that Muslim theology confuses any sort of being or subsistence with material particulars.
Though this may be an imprecise way to say it, the mainstream Muslim doctrine seems to at least speak of what many would call the incommunicable attributes of God. At the very least we recognize a kind of claim to those classical divine attributes such as aseity, unity, eternality, infinity, immutability, impassibility, omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. Of most of these we could say that Muslim theologians only mean what some Christian theologians have meant by the via negativa. Allah is known by what he is not, or perhaps, that what we know is what he is not. The latter, however, seems only to deny that what we know is God at all.
The closest we come to a broad theology proper in Islam is the value placed on the ninety-nine names: Q7:180; 20:8; 59:22-24. What is important here, though, is memory and reciting, not inquiring, nor relating to each other.
What is ascribed of Allah very often conflicts with these incommunicable attributes. He is called “The Proud … The Indulgent and The Harmful” [Zwemer, 35]. If Allah is also compassionate, is he really a unity? These attributes seem to be in conflict with each other. Absolute sovereignty need not be what Zwemer called “ruthless omnipotence” [Zwemer, 12], but so it seems to be with Allah.
We have been speaking of the relation of divine attributes to this will. But what about the divine will to the nature of things below? It is taught that all things begin in a state of submission. In a sense, all things are “Muslim” by nature. But if this is true, then all created effects have natures that turned in a different direction. This happens to all humans at birth. Of course Christians also have to make an account of the origins and nature of evil, but it seems all the more difficult to do that if Allah is the sole cause of all things. He willed in the fullest sense all of what a Muslim would call evil. This is true of personal agents: “you will only wish to do so if God wills” (Q76:30).
In such a voluntarist doctrine of Allah, as Geisler and Saleeb explain, “What gives unity to all of God’s actions is that he wills them all” [134]. It may be argued that these attributes are for the most part expressions of will rather than the way that we would speak of divine attributes as God’s essential character.
If Allah wills, in the examples of superseding revelation or giving mercy against one’s real record of righteousness, contrary to what he had previously willed, has the will of Allah changed? If it is answered that this change is in time but that Allah’s will has not changed in itself, then we must ask further whether the previous revelation or record of righteousness was false. This is only to solve one problem by creating another. All this is summarized categorically by Zwemer: “In the Moslem doctrine of the Unity all real unity is absent. The attributes of Allah can no more be made to agree than the Surahs which he sent down to Mohammed; but in neither case does this lack of agreement, according to Moslems, reflect on Allah’s character” [35].
IMPLICATIONS ON THE REVELATION OF ALLAH
We mentioned the doctrine of abrogation (naskh): that Allah may speak a word that supersedes prior revelations. “God erases or confirms whatever He will” (Q13:39); and “When We substitute one revelation for another—and God knows best what He reveals” (16:101).
The first question we might ask is how any two verses can be at odds to begin with. Before we ask how the latter replaces the former, so compromising divine immutability, how is it, if Allah is omniscient, that he did not foresee all of the eventualities that would require the subsequent provisions?
Later revelations in Islam tend to meet some new need of the prophet or the community. But these should have been accounted for already by an eternal word. Nor is this problem restricted to the Quran and later tradition.
We may recall that Muslims believe that the Jewish and Christian revelation was originally the revelation of Allah (Q3:3, 65; 5:46; 9:111): before corruption, that is. White asks, “If no one can change Allah’s words, then how is it Muslims believe that is exactly what happened with the Torah and Injil?” [54] It may be said that Muhammad was not bringing a “new” message. What is new about it is that it is final, and so will “stick” this time. This is why Abraham, David, Jesus, etc. are view as all Muslims [White, 163]. A distinction between Allah’s word proper and the physical copies that Jews and Christians are guilty of forging may be imagined. But this only moves the problem of will one step back. This corruption: was it willed by Allah or not willed? In any event the Muslim doctrine of tawatur seems to include not merely the original revelation, but a promise that Allah protects the transmission of his word from corruption [Riddell & Cotterell, 75].
The analogous relationship between how Christians and Muslims view things is Jesus to the Quran: not Jesus to Muhammad, nor Bible to Quran [cf. Chapman, 84]. As such, we can draw an analogy between Incarnation and inscripturation. The analogy is very limited, but it is sufficient for our purposes. On the surface, two facts need to be reconciled: (1) the Quran is eternal; (2) Arabic is a language which evolved and originated in time. Could it be said that as Arabic is the divine language, it was merely manifest in time? However this is resolved it does not seem that the Muslim can apply it to the question of abrogation.
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