Logos and Revelation: Ibn ‘Arabi, Meister Eckhart, and Mystical Hermeneutics by Robert J. Dobie

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 485 In sum, Miner's study of Thomas helps us better understand how the passions in general and each passion in particular contribute to human flourishing and prepare the way for a felicity that transcends (but does not leave behind) the passions. Readers who work their way through this lovingly and carefully nuanced exposition of Thomas will find their efforts richly rewarded. EDGARDO COLON-EMERIC Duke Divinity School Durham, North Carolina Logos and Revelation: Ibn 'Arabi, Meister Eckhart, and Mystical Hermeneutics. By ROBERTJ. DOBIE. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University America Press, 2009. Pp. xii+ 313. $39.95 (paper). ISBN 978-0-8132-1677-5. This inquiry proposes and sustains the thesis that both Ibn 'Arabi and Eckhart were steeped in their respective revelational traditions, and from that vantage point engaged in a mode of philosophical theology using reason to order and clarify the revelational sources, as well as using those sources to expand standard philosophical categories to negotiate the known perils of discourse regarding divinity. Moreover, both ofthese thinkers, while working in disparate traditions, proceed dialectically to allow reason and revelation to illuminate each other fruitfully. They accomplish this in four areas-revelation itself, existence, intellect, and the ideal human paradigm-in such a way as to allow each tradition to illuminate the other, yet never eliding difference, especially where difference itself may further illuminate the comparative inquiry. But let us first position the respective authors. Ibn 'Arabi represents what I like to call the "second phase" of Islamic philosophy, wherein the center of gravity retuned east from Andalusia, while a fresh set of protagonists sought ways to relate revelation with reason rather than contrasting one to another (see my "Islamic Philosophical Theology and the West," Islamochristiana 33 [2007]: 75-90). That would explain why students of philosophy in the West might not recognize Ibn 'Arabi as a philosopher, habituated as they have become to the story that al-Ghazali's critique of Averroes effectively terminated any hope of philosophical inquiry in Islam. That judgment reflects modernist assessments of properly philosophical inquiry, however, rather than attending to the contours of philosophical theology in the wider Muslim world, comprising Shi'ite as well as Sunni perspectives. On a more accurate reading, al-Ghazali's critique 486 BOOK REVIEWS represents a dialectical moment in Islamic philosophical inquiry, not an end to it, much as recent scholarship finds Averroes to be less a "rationalist" than one who seeks ways to reconcile faith with reason (see Avita! Wohlman: Al-Ghazali, Averroes and the Interpretation ofthe Qur'an: Common Sense and Philosophy in Islam [London: Routledge, 2009]). A trio of Eastern thinkers form the vanguard of this "second phase" of Islamic philosophy, introducing a properly philosophical theology: Suhrawardi, Ibn 'Arabi, and Mulla Sadra. (For leads to them, see Oliver Leaman and Sayyed Hossain Nasr, eds., History of Islamic Philosophy [New York: Routledge, 1996]. For Ibn 'Arabi, the most comprehensive treatment can be found in William Chittick's trilogy: The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-'Arabf's Metaphysics of Imagination [Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1989]; The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-'Arabf's Cosmology [Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1997]; and Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al- 'Arabfand the Problem ofReligious Diversity [Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1995]; see also Salman Bashier, Ibn al-'Arabi's Barzakh: Concept of the Limit and the Relationship between God and the World (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2004). These secondary sources converge to help readers discover the philosophical acumen of Ibn 'Arabi. Though he is often dubbed a "mystic" (or even a "pantheist"), his work is better appreciated when read as a sustained attempt to articulate what Robert Sokolowski has identified as the crucial "distinction" between creator and creatures in a universe founded on free creation (The God of Faith and Reason [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996]). Now we begin to suspect why Dobie sought to compare Ibn 'Arabi with Meister Eckhart, who has been saddled with similar incomprehension. Yet applying the Sokolowski test allows us to capture Eckhart's intent as well: to show how a focus on Aquinas's masterful account of creation as "the emanation...