Overview of Athari Metaphysics 2

The correct doctrine ascribes to God everything that He has ascribed to Himself. One must acknowledge it both verbally and in their hearts. When it is said that God has a face that does not mean it is a body part or it is made of flesh. There must be a belief in it without comparing it to any created entity for God is above being like unto creatures. The apparent meaning and wording of His attributes are known but the modality or reality of the attributes are known to God alone and therefore must not be questioned. God is likewise above those who deny his attributes or to make them metaphors such as when God’s hands are mistakenly attributed to mean His power. This is to deny His attribute of possessing hands. God’s hand is responsible for directly creating Adam. Furthermore, God’s attributes are inseparable from His essence and yet not identical to each other and this distinction does not entail composition or causation but rather it is a counterfactual dependence. His attributes are not divided by time or space and therefore are distinguished by identity. The attributes of God are real and are affirmed in the texts based on the understanding of the pious predecessors and this is the apparent meaning which takes the entire corpus of revelation into context. All His attributes are uncreated The correct doctrine likewise holds that God is capable of acting in succession and can create different things at different times (55:29). Likewise, He can speak to His creation by His will and power whenever He wills. He can go from speaking with Moses to not speaking with him. All His actions are uncreated including those that have a beginning in time. God does not gain particular attributes while acting successively. The Creator in all of His Majesty possesses these attributes eternally, but individual speech acts occur in time. God’s action is His attribute and that which is acted upon is distinct from Him as it is part of His creation. God's acts are distinct from the effects of His acts. The created effect is the result of the uncreated act. Furthermore, when the meaning is known of the attributes of God this is not anthropomorphizing God as the ontology is different. God and creation can possess an essence without being similar ontologically due to analogical predication. Furthermore, when it is said that God exists and His creation exists, the sharing of the universal of “existing” is again not anthropomorphizing unless there is an assumed realism. The assumed realism states that God and His creation both have, for example, knowledge and this universal of knowledge must be partially identical in God and man. However, if realism is rejected in favor of nominalism/conceptualism the objection falls as there is no ontological sharing as ontological sharing does not exist. Every object including its essence and attributes is particular and not universal as universals only exist as concepts in the mind. We experience God directly with our eyes through the beatific vision in the afterlife and we experience Him in this world through our fitra which is not through an inferential process nor argumentation but an inferential or empirical process and argumentation can be used to know God. The principles of reasonings are known directly through the fitra as an apparatus. For example, all humans know that a half is less than a whole and this is direct knowledge without requiring inference. It relies on the existence of God to create us with the fitra and the fitra is also a natural disposition to recognize God. There is real causality in the world which does not operate without God’s will. There is secondary causality. God’s actions are His attributes rather than His actions refer only to His created effects. They have a beginning in time and yet are uncreated. The Quran is uncreated and my recitation is uncreated. The Quran is not eternal in terms of speech-act as it was spoken in time to the angel Gabriel then to the Prophet Muhammad. It is eternal in the sense that it is within God’s knowledge that He knew that He would speak but that act of speaking itself happens at a particular moment in time. Occasionalism is an incorrect position. The existence of secondary causality in the world indicates that events can have causes other than direct intervention by God. Occasionalism, on the other hand, posits that all events are directly caused by God without any intermediary causes. Overall, unlike the God of the Aristotelians, the God of Islam is a dynamic creator who knows particulars and is not simple, acts in succession, and has multiple real attributes without being a composite being.