Hylomorphism, Change, and God's Mutability: A Rejoinder to Ebrahim Azadegan

Abstract

Hylomorphism, Change, and God's Mutability:A Rejoinder to Ebrahim Azadegan Amirhossein Zadyousefi (bio) In "A Long Way to God's Mutability: A Response to Ebrahim Azadegan"1 I tried to challenge what Azadegan says in his "On the Incompatibility of God's Knowledge of Particulars and the Doctrine of Divine Immutability: Towards a Reform in Islamic Theology."2 Then, in his "Necessary Existence, Immutability, and God's Knowledge of Particulars: A Reply to Amirhossein Zadyousefi,"3 Azadegan replies to my response. In my response to Azadegan, I discussed many points, and Azadegan did not deal with all of them in his reply. So, in this short rejoinder, I will deal with what Azadegan has said about some of my criticisms. Before proceeding, I should say that in my response to Azadegan I remained neutral on whether God is mutable or not. All I have done there is to show that Azadegan's path to God's mutability by adopting Sadra's knowledge-by-presence theory is not as easy as it initially seems. Also, I have tried to show that Avicenna does not adopt the dogma of God's immutability. Rather, he has some reasons for adopting this view. I understand that one might challenge Avicenna's reasons for God's immutability. But, as I insisted in my first response to Azadegan, we should be careful not to conflate having a dogma with having a bad reason. In his reply to my response, Azadegan states that "according to Zadyousefi, Avicenna believes in an incompatibility between God's necessary existence and the denial of divine immutability." Then, he presents the following argument that he calls "Argument from God's Necessary Existence to His Immutability": [End Page 196] A1: 1. God is a necessary existent. 2. A necessary being possesses his attributes necessarily (the principle of 'Necessity of a necessary Being's Attributes'). 3. If God has a certain knowledge-set, then He has it necessarily. 4. A necessary existent exists in all possible worlds and at all times. 5. In all possible worlds God has a certain fixed knowledge-set. 6. So what God knows at w1 (in a possible world w1 or in time t1 in the actual world) is the same as what God knows at w2 (or t2). 7. Therefore, God is immutable."4 But I have not argued by virtue of the above argument that according to Avicenna God's being a necessary existent is inconsistent with God's mutability. Instead, I have presented the following argument to show that: A2: Avicenna, following Aristotle, explains change via matter. That is, if something undergoes change or can undergo change, then it is composed of matter and form and hence it is material. Now, since every material being is constituted by a matter-form compound, every material being is dependent on its constituents (matter and form) and therefore is a contingent being. For a contingent being, according to Avicenna, is a being that is dependent on something else. So, every material being would be contingent. Therefore, God's mutability entails God's being material, which in turn entails God's being contingent. So, God's being a necessary existent is incompatible with God's mutability. As we can see, this argument is completely different from A1. I suspect Azadegan's A1 is a misinterpretation of an objection that I raised against him. In his initial paper, following Ghazālī, Azadegan states that, according to Avicenna, God's knowledge of particulars is in tension with God's eternality. In my response, I argued that this is not the case. According to Avicenna, God's knowledge of changing particulars, based on some certain mechanism for knowing the occurrence of a change among particulars (i.e., knowledge of change through indexical propositions), is in tension with God's being a necessary existent. I stated this inconsistency as follows: A3: 8. God is omniscient. 9. Therefore, for any change C among particulars, God knows the occurrence of C. 10. For any knower S, if S knows the occurrence of C, then S's set of knowledge changes (based on indexical propositions). [End Page 197] 11. If S's set of knowledge changes...