Perpetual Creation, Volitional Attributes, and the Infinite Past: Between Ibn Taymiyya and the Kalam Theologians

This is a guest article by brother Abdul Rahman.

Abbreviations:

PC = Perpetual Creation

IT = Ibn Taymiyya

KT = Kalam Theologians

I recently came across a critic arguing that within a Taymiyyan paradigm, perpetual creation (the view that God’s creation successively extends into the infinite past) is a metaphysical necessity, and that viewing it as such is regarded as theologically binding. Considering this topic has been generating a lot of buzz lately, I’ve chosen to use the mentioned criticisms as a means to an end and delve into this issue with a bit of depth in this piece.

Clearing the most obvious misconceptions can be an effective way of communicating a particular view, so you can consider this a “rebuttal” piece that also aims to incorporate an explanatory style. In dealing with the raised contentions, I will hopefully be laying out some of the details that pertain to the source of this dispute and why Ibn Taymiyya was interested in it in the first place, as well as some of the variables that motivate the different positions taken on the issue.

I’ve been slowly writing this in bits and pieces over the past couple of weeks (whenever I got an opportunity away from either working, getting punched by toddlers, or screamed at by the newborn), so thoughts might be a bit scattered.

A few peripherals before I get to the meat of the matter:

- The criticisms under discussion implicitly claim that perpetual creation entails that “God can never be alone”, while loosely trying to incorporate a very fuzzy understanding Ibn Taymiyya’s theory of causation as supporting evidence. This is false. If anything, the view that “God can never be alone” sounds more like an implication of the creation model adopted by divine simplicity proponents among the Falasifa. As for Ibn Taymiyya, nowhere in his works does he say anything close to this, and one would be hard-pressed to show that it necessarily follows from the only place of possible relevance: his theory of metaphysical modality. What I will be focusing on here, however, is the claim that a Taymiyyan paradigm is fundamentally incompatible with a denial of the necessity of perpetual creation. Through this main issue, we’ll be branching out to several other very important areas of discussion which still relate to the question of perpetual creation.

- Just to briefly touch on one of the more “dopamine-inducing” dimensions in these philosophical battles, a quick note on the rhetorical roadmap we’ve got at play here. The way I see it, there is stark irony (and humour?) in the fact that most of those who caricature Salafi Aqeeda for a living (mainly through misrepresentations of the “God can never be alone” type) are self-admittedly committed to views such as:

View #1: “God must have been alone”

In other words, God couldn’t have chosen to make it so that there were always creatures in existence. If it should just be taken for granted that there is a problem with the view that “God couldn’t have chosen to ever be alone” – which allegedly follows from Taymiyyan theology - then why shouldn’t the same apply to the view that “God couldn’t have chosen to always create”? If the former limits God’s power, then so does the latter. If the former makes a merely possible act of creation necessary, then so does the latter make a possible act of creation impossible. Also, just as there are claims to rational/scriptural evidence that refutes the former and validates the latter, there are also rational and scriptural grounds the opposing side uses to affirm the former and reject the latter.

Furthermore, the claim that Ibn Taymiyya’s position implies that “God can never be alone” is clearly a point of dispute which the Taymiyyan contests. Conversely, “God couldn’t have chosen to always create” is not only a view that is explicitly held to by the bulk of the Kalam theologians (KT), but one which they also regard as an indispensable tenet within their theology (expressed in very different words, of course).

The idea here is not that we have a philosophical stalemate of sorts because of both sides claiming evidence in their favour, so excuse the relativistic undertone. The idea is that unless the opposing views and their reasons are understood reasonably well and included in one’s analysis (which, from my experience, is rarely the case for critics of Ibn Taymiyya), the critique is likely to lack any kind of substance.

View #2: “God’s act of creation is an essential attribute”

This, to many, either entails: a) the eternality of the effect and – ironically – that “God can never be alone” (which is what Asharis criticize the Maturidi position for, as well as what the Falasifa say should follow from both the Ashari and Maturidi views), or b) that creation is “necessary” (not problematic per se, but certainly could be), or c) that there can exist an extrinsic act without there ever being a direct object related to it.

View #3: “God’s attribute of creative action (and for some His Will) is identical to – or subsists within - created things”

This arguably implies that God has no acts whatsoever – let alone specific ones like creating the world or “making it cease to exist”.

View #4: “God’s act of creation is identical to His essence”.

No comment!

And the list goes on. You know that “glass houses” and “stones” thing? Yea..that.  

The above points aside, let’s look at the substance:

The claim was that the necessity of perpetual creation (PC) is uncompromisable from a Taymiyyan perspective for the following reasons:

1) PC is required to defend the view that God’s attribute of “Speech” never ceased to be. The argument is supposed to be that if creation ex-nihilo is possible, then the eternity of Kalam – as understood by Ibn Taymiyya (IT) - is no longer required/possible.

2) The act of “Speaking” is volitional, so it must involve creation (i.e. creation is a concomitant of volitional acts/attributes on a Taymiyyan view).

3) Given IT’s understanding of what constitutes Ta’teel (making God “inactive” prior to creation), a denial of PC implies Ta’teel by Taymiyyan standards.

Response:

1) “PC is required to defend the view that God’s attribute of Speech never ceased to be.”

The claim here is that one of the consequences of the Taymiyyan conception of Divine Speech is that it would have to be “inactive” in the absence of creation. More detail will follow on the “inactiveness” point later, but for now let’s just focus on the attribute of Speech. The reasoning for the above conclusion seems to be based on an assessment of the Hanbali/Taymi understanding of Kalam. The critic’s words seem to imply that since Kalam doesn’t stay in the “nafs” for Hanbalis, it must be the case that it requires some sort of “locus” external to God. “If it begins and ends in Himself without being ‘expressed outside’, does it qualify as Kalam from the Taymi perspective?”.

It seems he thinks that since God would be alone and the speech would have nowhere to “go”, the speech ending in “himself” either makes it Kalam Nafsi (inner speech) or renders the Hanbali understanding of Speech incoherent. Of course, this is so obviously false that I initially thought I wasn’t quite understanding what the critic was saying. Unfortunately, the hesitation was short-lived, because shortly afterwards, I saw the Hadith where Allah says, “Whose is the Dominion this day” (after all of creation is no more) being cited as both evidence against IT’s view of Kalam and an affirmation of the “Kalam Nafsi” view.

The source of this very confused take, if I am going to be charitable, might a conflation of the Taymiyyan and Ash’ari theories of divine action. Allow me to briefly explain:

The Asha’ri view is that the essential attribute of Kalam eternally subsists in Allah, but the “act” of Takallum (speaking) does not. Why? Well – long story short – for them, Allah’s acts are both temporal and identical to their effects. For example, Allah’s act of creating is identical to its created effects; meaning that there exists no substantial “act” attributed to the agent apart from a conceptual relation with the effect. Part of what motivates this view is that the nature of both volitional acts and (ordered) speech seem to imply temporal succession (unlike the Falasifa and Maturidiya, Ash’aris do not allow for “eternal acts” in their ontology). This means that if they were to attribute Takallum to God as an act that subsists in His essence, it would result in what they call a “change” in God. Change, or temporal succession, is obviously a huge no-no for the KT. This is despite the fact that some of their most towering figures, such as Al-Razi and Al-Amidi, dissected the main Kalami arguments for divine immutability (changelessness) and definitively concluded - in more than one of their works - that the arguments were straightforwardly flawed. Al-Amidi even went as far as saying that some of the arguments were so bad, they weren’t even worth mentioning. Despite that, many people still feel secure in relying on such speculative and hugely controversial arguments as a basis in the construction of their entire theological framework. What Al-Razi and Al-Amidi did accept as evidence for immutability was the argument from “perfection” (which, as IT puts it, is arguably worse than the ones they refuted).

In any case, since our Asha’ri brothers still want to affirm Kalam as a divine attribute that subsists in God’s essence (as opposed to taking the Mu’tazili route), they affirm it as “inner speech” (Kalam nafsi).  

Now considering the above, if you inadvertently project Kalami metaphysics onto your analysis of the Taymiyyan understanding of “Takallum” as a successive volitional act, you might wind up thinking that it is the Taymiyyan position – not your own – that argues that God’s speech requires a created “locus” for it to subsist in; “because otherwise, it can only stay within Himself”.

“Himself” here can mean one of two things: either “inner speech” as is the case with the Ash’ari view of Kalam nafsi, or just “speech that subsists in its speaker”. The former is laughably off the mark, because why in the world would that follow from IT’s view? And if he meant the latter, then that’s just what the Taymiyyan view of Speech is anyway - with or without creation! Speech “subsists in its speaker”, not in something external to the speaker. It’s as if he thinks that for IT speech could not subsist in the speaker unless it is understood as Kalam nafsi, which again just embarrassingly confuses IT’s philosophy with that of the KT.

Ibn Taymiyya says:

وَقَدْ عَلِمُوا بِالْأَدِلَّةِ الْيَقِينِيَّةِ أَنَّ الْكَلَامَ يَقُومُ بِالْمُتَكَلِّمِ، كَمَا يَقُومُ الْعِلْمُ بِالْعَالِمِ وَالْقُدْرَةُ بِالْقَادِرِ، وَالْحَرَكَةُ بِالْمُتَحَرِّكِ، وَأَنَّ الْكَلَامَ الَّذِي يَخْلُقُهُ اللَّهُ فِي غَيْرِهِ لَيْسَ كَلَامًا لَهُ، بَلْ لِذَلِكَ الْمَحَلِّ الَّذِي خَلَقَهُ فِيهِ. فَإِنَّ الصِّفَةَ إِذَا قَامَتْ بِمَحَلٍّ عَادَ حُكْمُهَا عَلَى ذَلِكَ الْمَحَلِّ، وَلَمْ يَعُدْ عَلَى غَيْرِهِ، وَاشْتُقَّ لِذَلِكَ الْمَحَلِّ مِنْهُ اسْمٌ وَلَمْ يُشْتَقَّ لِغَيْرِهِ.

منهاج السنة ج٣ ص٣٥٥

Here, IT is simply affirming that just as knowledge subsists in the knower and power subsists in the powerful, speech subsists in the speaker; because whatever attribute subsist in a subject is exclusively predicable of that very subject.

(Don’t have the time to translate, so I’ll just summarize the meaning whenever I reference something in Arabic)

Furthermore, “Takallum” is classified as a “fi’l lazim”, which is an act that does not require a foreign object being acted upon (more on this point later). This means that it does not necessarily imply a relation.

Summing up the confusion, some people believe that the very act of God speaking is itself a created thing, and considering Ibn Taymiyya says that God’s acts are temporal and subsist in Him, they cannot imagine that being the case without God’s speech requiring a created locus. The reason for that, it seems, is that they can’t help but read the Taymiyyan position through the same anthropomorphic lens that led them to understand God’s acts as created things in the first place.

There was a further claim that part of what commits IT to the above conclusion is the concept of “qadr mushtarak”. Qadr mushtarak is the (conceptual) shared aspect related to attributes that are predicated of both God and creation. If I say, “God has knowledge” and “I have knowledge”, then the abstract concept “knowledge” applies to both subjects, albeit with completely different modalities and degrees. The same can be said of other attributes.

How does any of this relate to the claim that eternal Takallum entails perpetual creation for IT, though? Well, it seems that some people think that the idea of qadr mushrarak is:

- exclusively Taymiyyan/Hanbali

- anthropomorphic

Firstly, it is certainly not exclusively Taymi. You’ll find that many of the KT, including the likes of Al Razi, spoke of the idea of qadr mushtarak (in a manner that many of IT’s critics would classify as anthropomorphic, if I may add). Al Razi says:

وإن عنيتم بالمشبه من يقول بكون الله شبيها بخلقه من بعض الوجوه فهذا لا يقتضي الكفر لأن المسلمين اتفقوا على أنه موجود وشيء وعالم وقادر، والحيوانات أيضا كذلك

نهاية العقول  

Here, Al Razi is claiming a consensus among Muslims that certain attributions made of the creator share a common aspect with the same attributions when made of creation.

You see similar claims in the works of many of the KT, such as Al-Juwayni, Al-Ghazali, Al-Qarafi, Al-Shahristani, Al-Amidi, and more (I can provide literally pages of quotes on this). In fact, the implications of IT’s understanding of qadr mushtarak can be extremely “minimal” compared to that of certain figures among the KT. This really isn’t a matter of dispute for anyone with a basic familiarity on the topic.

Insinuating that qadr mushtarak implies anthropomorphism exclusively for IT should involve a relevant difference between the respective positions, which hasn’t been done (here, the discussion normally revolves around the difference between Sifat Al-Ma’ani and Al-Sifat Al-‘Ayniyya – in which I think the attempts to demonstrate a relevant difference miserably fail – but that’s besides the point considering the criticisms in question directed the critique at the concept of “qadr mushtarak” simpliciter).

The critic said the following: “IT adheres to Qadr Mushtarak, so the Kalam of God has to have some meaning derived from the common factor with our Kalam to be considered Kalam.” Well, as mentioned above, so does Kalam nafsi (inner speech). To defend the Kalam nafsi view (as well as other attributes), Ash’aris have gone as far as pointing to examples from within creation that are considered analogous to Kalam Nafsi (for example, the distinction between knowledge, will, and other inner states that classify as neither of those but are instead considered to be a form of “inner speech”). Packaging the idea of qadr mushtarak as exclusively Taymiyyan seriously reeks of ignorance at best.

The more essential point that directly relates to the topic at hand, however, is the broader issue of anthropomorphism and the impact it may have on the practice of “theologising”. From a Taymiyyan perspective, some sects seem to have an inherently anthropomorphic reading of scripture to start with. When trying to understand revelation, their minds can wander off to imaginative territory, with mental imagery and philosophical speculation doing much of the work. As a result of this “thought process”, they then deny the “plain meaning” (Zahir) of the text because of the “problematic implications” therein. What needs to be understood, however, is that the culprit here is not the Zahir of the text in and of itself, but the anthropomorphic lens through which you understand the divine attributes. You see, I too would deny the apparent meaning of God’s “Wrath” if I thought it looked anything like Voldemort’s wrath or my own; but getting such a meaning out of a predicate made of God is – as IT puts it – “the epitome of anthropomorphism”.

Of course, the above analysis is not always applicable, but I do believe it applies to the context at hand, where someone seems to imagine the Kalam of Allah – as per the Taymiyyan understanding – as he would imagine his cousin talking to himself in his bedroom. Since IT denies inner speech and affirms qadr mushtarak, the reasoning goes, the implication is that the Takallum of Allah must involve a “mechanical disturbance from a state of equilibrium that propagates through an elastic material medium”. Besides completely misunderstanding the foundations of his own theology (let alone IT’s), he’s simply imagining a human being talking and then concluding: “well, that can’t be God, now can it??”. But...if the locus of Allah’s act of Speaking wasn’t some created thing as opposed to Himself, then that’s what it must have looked like when He directly spoke to Moses! So, when God said that He spoke to Moses at an appointed time, He must have actually meant that the burning bush - or a created thing within it - uttered created expressions in reference to a single, eternal, all encompassing meaning that subsists within Allah..problem solved!    

IT discusses this issue in several places. For example, he says:

فقالوا قد ثبت أن الليل يختلف بالنسبة إلى الناس فيكون أوله ونصفه وثلثه بالمشرق قبل أوله ونصفه وثلثه بالمغرب قالوا فلو كان النزول هو النزول المعروف للزم أن ينزل في جميع أجزاء الليل إذ لا يزال في الأرض ليل قالوا أو لا يزال نازلا وصاعداً وهو جمع بين الضدين وهذا إنما قالوه لتخيلهم من نزوله ما يتخيلونه من نزول أحدهم وهذا عين التمثيل ثم إنهم بعد ذلك جعلوه كالواحد العاجز منهم الذي لا يمكنه أن يجمع من الأفعال ما يعجز غيره عن جمعه

درء تعارض العقل والنقل

In the above passage, IT relays an issue that some have with the Hadith of Nuzul. For them, “real” Nuzul implies that God must be in a continuous state of descending - or even worse - in a continuous contradictory state that combines both ascension and descension. This is because there are always locations on Earth where it is night, and others where it is day. IT’s claim is that the only reason they describe it as such is because they imagine His act of descending just as they’d imagine it of themselves, to which IT says: “and that is the epitome of anthropomorphism”.

This is one of the most crucial points you will ever come across when studying this topic, and it can be regarded as a necessary condition for understanding anything else. From a Taymiyyan perspective, the reason the “apparent meanings” of the attributes do not imply tashbeeh is simply because they are predicated of the Creator; and our ignorance of the modality of His essence entails an ignorance of the modality of His attributes. What does amount to tashbeeh, however, is conceiving of the reality of an attribute in the same way you would imagine it applying to your buddy Tim from soccer practice. Denying the apparent meaning, IT argues, doesn’t solve the problem. If we consistently apply their standards, then affirming anything of the Creator will result in the same problem, simply because there is no relevant difference between the attributes you affirm and the others you deny unless one is identified.

2) The act of “Speaking” is volitional, so it must involve creation (i.e., creation is a concomitant of volitional acts/attributes on a Taymiyyan view)

The unqualified appeal to “concomitance” in this context suggests some sort of metaphysically necessary relation between “Acts of Will” and “Creation” (i.e., in and of itself, the intrinsic nature of volitional action necessitates the existence of creative acts/created beings).

Like the first point we discussed, this contention seems to be an inadvertent projection of Kalami views on what is supposed to be an "internal critique" of Taymiyyan theology.

Here’s how the (confused) line of reasoning goes:

- If volitional acts exist, then temporal succession exists

- If temporal succession exists, then creation exists

- Therefore, if volitional acts exist, then creation exists (by the transitivity of the material conditional)

Clearly, a Taymiyyan would not accept the second premise without qualification. IT agrees with the bulk of the KT that acts of will are inherently successive, but nothing about succession in and of itself necessitates creation unless we assume the extremely dubious and controversial metaphysical foundations upon which the KT base their version of the cosmological argument (more on this further below).

Here’s a passage from Al-Safadiyya that can shed some light on whether IT believes that volitional attributes necessitate creation:

والأفعال نوعان لازمة ومتعدية فالفعل اللازم لا يقتضي مفعولا والفعل المتعدي يقتضي مفعولا فإن لم يكن الدائم إلا الأفعال اللازمة وأما المتعدية فكانت بعد أن لم تكن لم يلزم وجود ثبوت شيء من المفعولات في الأزل وإن قدر أن الدائم هو الفعل المتعدي أيضا والمستلزم لمفعول فإذا كان الفعل يحدث شيئا بعد شيء فالمفعول المشروط به أولا بالحدوث شيئا بعد شيء لأن وجود المشروط بدون الشرط محال فثبت أنه على كل تقدير لا يلزم أن يقارنه في الأزل لا فعل معين ولا مفعول معين فلا يكون في العالم شيء يقارنه في الأزل وإن قدر أنه لم يزل فاعلا سبحانه وتعالى فهذه الطريقة قرر فيها ثبوت القديم المحدث للحوادث وحدوث كل ما سواه من غير احتياج إلى طريقة الوجوب والإمكان ولا إلى طريقة الجواهر والأعراض."

الصفدية ج ٢  ص ٢٣

Here, Ibn Taymiyya is discussing the impossibility of an “eternal effect” by basically saying this: immanent actions (“af’al lazima” in Arabic, which are actions that do not involve a foreign object) do not require the existence of creation (i.e., do not require direct objects of action which are foreign to the agent), as opposed to transient actions (“af’al muta’adiya” in Arabic, which are actions that involve a foreign object acted upon by the agent) which do. He then argues that if the beginningless series of acts was specifically that of immanent actions, in which case transient actions would have began to exist after having never been, then no created being would be eternal. On the other hand, if both kinds of actions extended into the infinite past, then each effect necessarily succeeds its respective transient act; and this too would make it impossible for an eternal effect to exist.

It is thus clear that for Ibn Taymiyya, creation is not a concomitant of immanent actions. Now the question is whether there is any kind of volitional act that falls under the category of immanent actions. Any kind of volitional act that satisfies the condition would suffice to refute the claim that “creation is a concomitant of volitional acts/attributes on a Taymiyyan view”, let alone if that act were “Takallum”.   

In His “Minhaj Al-Sunnah”, IT says:

وَالْقَوْلُ بِدَوَامِ كَوْنِهِ مُتَكَلِّمًا وَدَوَامِ كَوْنِهِ فَاعِلًا بِمَشِيئَتِهِ مَنْقُولٌ عَنِ السَّلَفِ وَأَئِمَّةِ الْمُسْلِمِينَ مِنْ أَهْلِ الْبَيْتِ وَغَيْرِهِمْ، كَابْنِ الْمُبَارَكِ وَأَحْمَدَ بْنِ حَنْبَلٍ وَالْبُخَارِيِّ وَعُثْمَانَ بْنِ سَعِيدٍ الدَّارِمِيِّ وَغَيْرِهِمْ، وَهُوَ مَنْقُولٌ عَنْ جَعْفَرِ بْنِ مُحَمَّدٍ الصَّادِقِ فِي الْأَفْعَالِ الْمُتَعَدِّيَةِ - فَضْلًا عَنِ اللَّازِمَةِ - وَهُوَ دَوَامُ إِحْسَانِهِ ، [وَذَلِكَ قَوْلُهُ: وَقَوْلُ الْمُسْلِمِينَ: يَا قَدِيمَ الْإِحْسَانِ إِنْ عُنِي بِالْقَدِيمِ قَائِمٌ بِهِ]

منهاج السنة ج٢ ص٣٨٦

In the above passage, IT explains how the Salaf believed that the Creator never ceased to be “Mutakallim” and never ceased to act of His own Will. He mentions some names among the Salaf and early Imams who held to the view, such as Ibn Al-Mubarak, Ahmed Ibn Hanbal, Al-Bukhari, Al-Dharimi, “and others”. He then says that the same has been attributed to Jaafar Al-Sadiq but specifically with regard to Af’al Muta’adiya (transient actions) , let alone immanent actions - thereby clearly distinguishing between Takallum as an act of Will on the one hand, and the category of transient actions – which require created objects – on the other.

In case it isn’t already clear, this would make zero sense if IT had a similar view to the KT who make God’s Takallum “dependent” on the existence of creation.  

The “concomitance” claim thus seems to be just as wrong-headed as the one before it.

3) Given IT’s understanding of what constitutes Ta’teel (making God “inactive” prior to creation), a denial of PC implies Ta’teel by Taymiyyan standards.

Of all the points raised, this one is the most relevant to the topic and does, in fact, carry some substance. Dealing with it should shed some light on the source of the dispute and provide better explanatory value on the original question of perpetual creation.

When it comes to the Divine Attributes of Action, the following two stances are highly relevant to the “Ta’teel” discussion at hand:

(1) A series of acts extending into the infinite past is impossible (call this IV for “impossible view”)

(2) A series of acts extending into the infinite past is possible but not actual (call this PNA for the “possible but not actual” view)

The difference between possibility and actuality is crucial to understand in this context. If something is impossible, like an infinite series of acts as per (1), then it cannot exist. Conversely, if something is merely possible but not actual, like an infinite series of acts as per (2), that means it does not exist although it can (for example, maybe it’s possible for unicorns to exist, but for whatever reason, it just happens to be the case that they do not). Also, if something is actual, then that simply means it exits (example: the San Siro stadium of AC Milan).

If it was impossible in itself for Superman to fly in the past, then it simply couldn’t have been the case that he flew – or had the ability to fly - in the past, making this a case of IV. On the other hand, if it was possible for Superman to fly in the past but also happened to be the case that he did not exercise his ability to do so, then both possibility and ability would be maintained at the expense of actuality, making it a case of PNA.

Both IV and PNA can be seen as forms of Ta’teel from differing perspectives amongst Muslim sects (more on this further below), but to identify which of them constitutes a kind of Ta’teel that directly negates foundational theological tenets from IT’s perspective, we can look at the justifications presented by proponents of each of the positions.

Keep in mind that in what follows, we will be overlooking some philosophical considerations on the nature of time as well as the intricacies of infinite regress discussions, since they’re beyond the scope of our current analysis. Except for the explicit points of disagreement, the common ground on which the discussion is built is generally agreed upon between IT and the KT.

The “Impossible” View

This view is mainly justified by the fact that an infinite series of past events is logically impossible. The importance of this principle for the KT can’t be overstated, and it stems from their primary argument for the existence of God: the cosmological argument (Daleel Al-Huduth).

In their very “distinctive” version of the argument, they reason their way to the premise that no “body” is free of temporality, and that “whatever is not free of temporality is necessarily non-eternal”. In order to prove that every temporal entity has a beginning, they utilise a host of arguments against the possibility of an infinite series of past events, which clearly entails IV.

However, it isn’t only IV that the argument entails. Another crucial commitment that follows from the argument is that, considering action is essentially temporal, God’s acts cannot subsist in Him. For if they did, then their temporality would negate His eternal nature in virtue of the fact that “whatever is not free of temporality is non-eternal”.

The “Possible but not Actual” View

Ibn Taymiyya’s take on different types of infinities is a complex topic that requires an article on its own. For our current purposes, a general overview should suffice. As a brief digression, for something contemporary in the literature that comes close to explaining IT’s overall view on what a permissible kind of regress might look like, you can take a look at the 5th chapter of Alexander Pruss’s excellent book, “Infinity, Causation, and Paradox”, although there’s much more to say on IT’s view than what you’ll find there. It’s worth noting that the specific model that relates to IT’s view in the book is one that Pruss regards as a “non-vicious” kind of regress. He does, however, say that it has an “overdetermination” worry; something I believe further details from IT’s works could possibly impact.

Back to the PNA view, IT discusses the main arguments for finitism and critiqued them from several angles. For him, an actually infinite series of events in the past is possible, provided there is an “outside cause” for the series, among other conditions. Therefore, given the existence of a necessary being and His direct causal involvement in the series, an infinite chain of created events is possible. Keep in mind that IT is all on his own in taking these stances against arguments for a finite past. Several theologians - including Al-Razi, Al-Abhari, Al-Armawi, Al-Qarafi and others - strongly critiqued Kalami arguments that aim to demonstrate the impossibility of an infinite series of past events. 

IV, PNA, and the Modal Status of the Past

Generally speaking, the Mutakllimun agree that God’s power extends over all possibilities within the “conceptual” realm of the infinite past (not just logically, but metaphysically). In other words, prior to the very first act of creation, it was metaphysically possible for there to be another creation, and another possibility prior to that one, and so on ad infinitum. However, they deny that the “beginningless” nature of these metaphysical possibilities entails the possibility of an actually infinite series of contingent beings. Part of how they justify this seeming inconsistency is to say that God’s power does not attach to logical impossibilities (i.e., given the logical impossibility - from their standpoint - of an infinite series of past events, it follows that God’s power does not attach to it, just as it doesn’t attach to other impossibilities like squared circles).

Ibn Taymiyya has strong reservations against this line of reasoning. He argues that in essence, there is no difference between the beginningless modal status of genuine possibilities (Azaliyat Al-Imkan) and the genuine possibility of a beginningless series of events (Imkan Al-Azaliya). What follows from the impossibility of a perpetual series of past events should be an impossibility of the perpetuity of the modal status of possibilities in the past. On the other hand, what follows from the perpetuity of the modal status of possibilities should be the possibility of a perpetually extending past. A classic case of “you can’t have your cake and eat it too”.

As for IT’s position, he maintains that the beginningless modal status of possibilities is a concomitant of the beginningless nature of the Creator, who’s had power over possibilities from eternity past. This, however, still requires succession of some sort for Ibn Taymiyya. The reason – which relates to free will and PSR discussions - is that if the said possibility existed in a completely static reality, then nothing in such a state could “happen” in order to move possibilities into the realm of actuality, keeping them in a modal-free “limbo” state between possibility and impossibility. In effect, nothing could happen in such a changeless state, which would either imply the impossibility of these effects emerging, their eternality (since an eternal sufficient cause entails the eternality of its effect), their coming into existence without a temporal cause, or their coming into existence with a temporal cause that is either itself uncaused or that results in a regress in the sufficiency of a particular cause.

Here, we can go back to the distinction between immanent and transient actions. For IT, the perpetuity of immanent actions suffices to make “events” or “actions” of any sort metaphysically possible. Ibn Taymiyya even references this exact position from Al-Abhary and sees no incoherence or fundamentally detrimental theological implications from it. He says:

قال (أي الأبهري): (ثم قالوا: إن الباري تعالى يستلزم جملة ما يتوقف عليه وجود العالم، فيلزم من دوامه أزلية العالم، وهو ممتنع، لا محال أن يكون له إرادات حادثة، كل واحدة منها تستند إلى الأخرى، ثم تنتهي في في جانب النزول إلى أرادة تقتضي حدوث العالم، فلزم حدوثه)

قلت: فهذا الجواب خير من الذي ذكره الأرموي، وذكر أنه باهر، والأرموي نقله من المطالب العالية للرازي، فإنه ذكره، وقال: (إنه هو الجواب الباهر) ، ووافقه عليه القشيري المصري: فهذا أصح في الشرع والعقل.

أما الشرع: فإن هذا فيه قول بحدوث كل ما سوى الله، وذلك القول فيه إثبات عقول ونفوس أزليبة مع الله تعالى، والفرق بين القولين معلوم عند أهل الملل والشرائع.

وأما العقل: فإن قول الأرموي فيه إثبات أمور ممكنة، يحدث فيها حوادث متعاقبة من غير أمر يتجدد من الواجب، وهذا يقتض حدوث الحوادث بلا محدث، فإن الواجب بنفسه إذا كان علة مستلزمة لمعلولها، لم يجز تأخر شيء من معلوله عنه، بخلاف ما ذكره الأبهري، فإنه ليس فيه إلا أن الواجب مستلزم لآثاره شيئاً بعد شيء، وهذا متفق عليه بينهم، فإنه ليس فيه إلا تسلسل الآثار

درء تعارض العقل والنقل ج١ ص٣٧٨-٣٧٩

Ibn Taymiyya quotes Al-Abhary’s response to the claim that the Creator, being the eternal sufficient cause of the created world, should result in the eternality of creation. Al-Abhary says that this does not necessarily follow, for there could be succession within the Creator that does not necessitate creation, until the point comes where the world is created. Ibn Taymiyya rationally and scripturally favours this response over others by Al-Armawi and Al-Razi. Scripturally, it affirms that everything other than God has a beginning, before which it did not exist; and rationally, it affirms a succession of temporal acts each of which brings about its effect, thereby neither committing to a “changeless” eternal sufficient cause nor to a temporal effect without a temporal cause, along with the theoretical costs that follow from these implications.

This is why IT’s Ta’teel discussion is almost always accompanied with an emphasis on the eternal “impossibility” that follows from their position. This emphasis aims to show how detrimental their view is to what he regards as foundational theological tenets of the Deen. Furthermore, damage is not easily undone from within the Kalami framework, simply because of how deep rooted these ideas are. They do not merely stem from a secondary issue that can be reassessed or discarded, but from foundational metaphysical commitments that are taken by KT to be necessary conditions for any successful path that can rationally justify theism. This, of course, being the case despite the fact that the arguments upon which these Kalami tenets were based have been torn apart by theologians of their own, only for new arguments to be constructed in lieu of the older ones (in justification of the exact same principles), and the cycle goes on.

Keep in mind that the original flimsy and dubious argumentation that has been dissected by theologians and philosophers across the board (and replaced by arguments that are sometimes even worse than their predecessors) were considered the basis upon which the Ta’weel of chunks and chunks of Divine revelation was justified.  

Why do the Kalam Theologians negate volitional attributes for God?

As a consequence of their Daleel Al-Huduth, part of what the KT is generally committed to is the following:

a) Proving the existence of God is largely dependant on demonstrating that there necessarily existed a metaphysically absolute first temporal moment.

b) Proving the existence of God is not possible without an irrefutable defence of the claim that everything other than the Creator is temporal.

c) The fact that anything that is not free of temporality (of any sort) has a beginning in time.

d) The fact that an infinite series of past events is impossible (as justification for ‘a’ and ‘c’).

(P.S. The elitism kicks in when you realise that for them, those who do not go out of their way to understand and embrace these arguments – like the vast majority of believers who ever lived - are either deemed “subpar” or sinful at best, or unbelievers at worst)

Based on the above, the KT believe that if successive acts subsisted in God, then He would have a beginning in time (which is obviously a contradiction in terms). For example, when God addressed the Angels before creating Adam (as), or when He spoke to Moses (as) at an “appointed time”, or when He listens to you crying out to Him in supplication, or when He judges mankind on the day of Judgement: if in any of these instances, a temporal act of any sort subsists in Him, He would have a beginning in time, Subhanah.

The solution? His acts are identical to their effects and are “His” by merely relating to His eternal Power (although relations do not exist). Alternatively, the acts themselves could be eternal (and non-volitional), and they could temporally relate to their effects. The latter is the Maturidi view, which – quite ironically given the context at hand - criticises the Asha’ri position for its “Ta’teel” (i.e., only calling God an eternal Creator “majazan”). Another quick digression: the irony of this point is really quite telling. Maturidis believe that the creative acts of God must be eternal in order for Him to have truly always been “the Creator”. Try to think of what it would have looked like had they held to the (highly intuitive) view that a sufficient cause immediately necessitates its effect. Based on the Ta’teel contention alone, they would have to commit to the idea of an eternal effect, which would mean that “God can’t be alone”. Alternatively, they would apparently have to believe in the necessity of perpetual creation, which according to the criticisms entails that ”God can never be alone”. The fact that they don’t take such a position on the nature of causation is peripheral to the irony being emphasised here. As it turns out, your issue with IT is not that “God can never be alone”, but that he has a more plausible theory of causation.

In any case, the view that God is a fully atemporal entity with no succession whatsoever – even though He continuously creates and interacts with the temporal world Himself - is completely uncompromisable from a Kalami perspective. Still, it is somehow His creative action that results in any and all of the change that we see before us. Somehow, He is aware of and responsive to my temporal struggles and yours, despite the fact that before, during, and after the struggles, the Creator remained in the exact same numerically identical state He was in before we ever existed.

That is why the most crucial aspect of Ta’teel for IT is not the PNA view, for although he does favour the view that perpetual creation did indeed take place, maintaining its mere possibility while either remaining agnostic on whether it in fact occurred, or saying that it did not occur in light of scriptural evidence, is not in any deep kind of conflict with a broader Taymiyyan paradigm. In fact, it wouldn’t make sense for the PNA view to directly conflict with the foundations of a Taymiyyan framework, because it affirms essential creedal aspects like God’s acts being temporal and subsisting within Him, as well as the possibility of an infinite series of created events. IT’s essential Ta’teel criticism targets the metaphysical foundations upon which the KT base their rejection of God’s volitional attributes (as attributes subsisting in the subject of their predication – as we’ve come to expect), and through which they maintain that the genus of action was not merely eternally non-existent by virtue of His own Will, but that it was eternally impossible (despite God being Capable) before later becoming possible (without any causal explanation to account for the transition).

In criticism of the IV, IT says:

فإذا قيل لم يزل الرب قادرا وقيل مع ذلك لم يكن الفعل ممكنا ثم صار ممكنا وأنه يمتنع أن يكون الفعل لم يزل مقدورا كان حقيقة الكلام لم يزل قادرا مع كونه كان غير قادر ثم صار قادرا فإن إثبات القادرية مع امتناع المقدور جمع بين المتناقضين

الصفدية ج٢ ص١٦٨

"If it is said that the Lord was always Capable, and it is said that nevertheless action was not possible, after which it became possible, and that it is impossible for the action to have been always possible, then the truth of the statement is that He was always capable even though He only became capable after having not been. An affirmation of Power along with the impossibility of things within the scope of that Power is a contradiction."

(Al-Safadiyya, vol. 2, p. 168)

He also says:

فلا بد له من قدرة يستقل بها لا يفتقر فيها إلى غيره ولا يكون غيره شرطا فيها فتكون تلك القدرة من لوازم ذاته وهو المطلوب وإن كانت من لوازم ذاته امتنع أن يصيرا قادرا بعد أن لم يكن وامتنع أن يصير الفعل ممكنا بعد أن لم يكن فثبت أنه لم يزل قادرا ولم يزل المقدور ممكنا فثبت أن إمكان الفعل لا أول له وإذا كان الفعل لم يزل ممكنا أمكن أن يكون أزليا وإلا امتنع كونه أزليا. فعلم أن القول بأزلية الإمكان دون إمكان الأزلية جمع بين النقيضين وحذاقهم يعترفون بهذا

الصفدية ج٢ ص١٧٢

"Necessarily, to Him there belongs an exclusive Power for which He is not dependent on anyone else, nor can anything other than Himself be a condition for it (the Power). Thus, that Power is a concomitant of His essence, and that is what is sought. And if His Capability is a concomitant of His essence, it cannot be the case that He becomes Capable after having not been, nor can it be the case for action to become possible after having not been. It therefore follows that He never ceased to be Capable, and that which lies within the scope of His Capability never ceased to be (genuinely) possible, which entails the beginningless possibility of action. If actions were always possible, they (the genus of “acts”) could have been eternal; and if they were not (always possible), then they could not have been eternal. It is thus established that holding to the eternity of the modal status of possibilities without the possibility of (an actual) eternity (of a successive series of said possibilities) amounts to a contradiction; and (even) the most competent among them admit to this."

(Al-Safadiyya, vol. 2, p. 172)

And in specific reference to Takallum as well as action in general, he says:

قُلْنَا: بَلْ قَوْلُكُمْ: إِنَّ الرَّبَّ تَعَالَى لَمْ يَزَلْ مُعَطَّلًا لَا يُمْكِنُهُ أَنْ يَتَكَلَّمَ بِشَيْءٍ وَلَا أَنْ يَفْعَلَ شَيْئًا، ثُمَّ صَارَ يُمْكِنُهُ أَنْ يَتَكَلَّمَ وَأَنْ يَفْعَلَ بِلَا حُدُوثِ سَبَبٍ يَقْتَضِي ذَلِكَ، قَوْلٌ مُخَالِفٌ لِصَرِيحِ الْعَقْلِ وَلِمَا عَلَيْهِ الْمُسْلِمُونَ، فَإِنَّ الْمُسْلِمِينَ يَعْلَمُونَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ لَمْ يَزَلْ قَادِرًا، وَإِثْبَاتُ الْقُدْرَةِ مَعَ كَوْنِ الْمَقْدُورِ مُمْتَنِعًا غَيْرَ مُمْكِنٍ جَمْعٌ بَيْنَ النَّقِيضَيْنِ

منهاج السنة ج٢ ص٣٨٥

"I said, 'What your position amounts to is that the Lord Almighty was eternally unable to speak or act, and then became able to do so without a temporal cause allowing for that to happen, and it is a position that is in conflict with sound reason and with what Muslims know (of the Creator), for Muslims know that Allah has al ways been Capable. Affirming the existence of capability, while at the same time making impossible the things over which that capability applies, is incoherent.'"

(Minhaj al-Sunnah, vol. 2, p. 385)

Some people think that IT’s main issue with grounding the eternity of the Divine attributes of action in nothing but God’s Power is that it implies that there were no instances of the respective acts at some point. As discussed above, however, the fundamental flaw that renders some of the positions that adopt this path both rationally and scripturally untenable for IT can be summarised in the following sentence from Al-Nubuwwat:

وأن الله يمتنع أن يقال إنه لم يزل متكلما بمشيئته بعد أن لم يكن بلا حدوث حادث

النبوات ج١ ص٥٨٥

“And that it is incoherent to say that Allah never ceased to be Wilfully Mutakallim - after having never been (Willfully Mutakallim) - without the occurrence of an event (a temporal cause that accounts for the change from impossibility to possibility).”

The KT and the Falasifa generally agree that successive acts cannot subsist in the Creator. The Asha’ira, for example, claim that His acts are identical to the created realm, and that they are the effects of an eternal sufficient cause. The Falasifa, on the other hand, criticize the Asha’ira on this very point by saying that the eternity of the created effect should follow from their position. A sufficient cause that’s always existed - an atemporal, eternal cause that is sufficient for the existence of it’s effect – entails the eternality of its effect. In the interest of consistency, the Falasifa then posit an eternal “created” effect in the form of the Heavenly Spheres.

Ibn Taymiyya tells them that they’re both partly right, but that all in all, they’re also both seriously wrong. For the KT, they’re right for insisting on the fact that every created being must have had a beginning, for although this does count as an inconsistency within their position that maintains an eternal sufficient cause, there’s no way we could rationally or scripturally work our heads around the idea of a created being who also happens to be eternal. As for the Falasifa, they’re right for saying that an eternal sufficient cause necessitates the eternality of the effect. However, upon further analysis, it turns out that their position doesn’t escape this problem at all. That’s because we witness temporal events all around us: where in the world did THEY come from? From the eternal sufficient cause (either God or the Heavenly Spheres)? Obviously not, because that’s the issue they raised with the Mutakallimeen in the first place. From temporal causes that preceded them? Well, we’d ask the exact same questions of those causes, which would leave us with either a vicious regress of causes or an uncaused event with a beginning in time. More importantly though, IT reasons with them that based on the above, their view can be improved in two ways:

a) Since they’re already committed to the existence of temporal events as effects of an eternal sufficient cause, and since no amount of either eternal or non-eternal intermediaries can rationally aid them out of this problem: they’d be better off siding with the Mutakallimeen in affirming that every created being has a beginning in time before which it did not exist, which is closer to the truth both scripturally and rationally.   

b) Considering they see no problem with an infinite series of past events being possible, and since they don’t take the same “Huduth” route as the KT, then these eternally created entities don’t serve much of a purpose to begin with. It could simply be the case that God perpetually acts in a successive series that extends into the beginningless past, with each effect having been preceded by its own non-existence. IT argues that they don’t even have the “Huduth” worry that would prevent them from allowing for successive acts to subsist in God. The only cause of resistance their position comes with is the argument from composition, “and that just makes the whole thing a lot easier (to resolve)“, IT suggests; because there isn’t an easier argument to take apart, or one that’s more obviously flawed, than the argument from composition.   

In conclusion, the arguments posited by the critic suffer from gaping holes and a lack of serious engagement with the sophisticated thought of Ibn Taymiyya. The critic, as many others, are encouraged to engage in deeper self-introspection regarding their own stance before proceeding to critique those of others.