Natural Theology and the Qur'an

Abstract

While the Qur'an's doctrine of naskh means that the particulars of a revealed text were significant, the Qur'an's discussion of humans’ fiṭra and ḥunafāʾ (s. ḥanīf), along with its evocation of the wonders of creation as evidence of God's existence and power, meant that at least some of the Qur'an's message might not have to depend on a specific revealed text. Thus, the import of the Qur'an's references to order in nature has long been a question probed by commentators. This article will examine the responses of the mufassir and mutakallim al-Bayḍāwī (d. c. 1300) who wrote a tafsīr informed by kalām at a time when kalām texts, including al-Bayḍāwī’s, began to incorporate the approach and findings of falsafa and natural science. Al-Bayḍāwī’s comments on Q. 21:32 held that one could learn more about signs (āyāt) of God's greatness through physics and astronomy. Then, in his interpretation of Q. 2:164, al-Bayḍāwī referred to the technical terminology of astronomy in order to argue that while there was order in nature, astronomy could not, on its own, provide an explanation for the existing order, as opposed to another possible order. Al-Bayḍāwī navigated the tension between acknowledging Ashʿarī kalām's arguments that scientists’ conclusions were contingent and the Qur'an's insinuations that the human intellect could detect a meaningful order in nature.