Necessary Existence, Immutability, and God's Knowledge of Particulars: A Reply to Amirhossein Zadyousefi

Abstract

Necessary Existence, Immutability, and God's Knowledge of Particulars:A Reply to Amirhossein Zadyousefi Ebrahim Azadegan (bio) From the Qur'an, Surah Maryam: (21) So she conceived him, and went in seclusion with him to a remote place. (22) And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree: she cried (in her anguish): "Ah! would that I had died before this! Would that I had been a thing forgotten and out of sight!" (23) But (a voice) cried to her from beneath the (palm tree): "Grieve not! for thy Lord hath provided a rivulet beneath thee;" (24) "And shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm tree: it will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee." (25) "So eat and drink and cool (thine) eye. And if thou dost see any man say 'I have vowed a fast to (Allah) Most Gracious, and this day will I enter into no talk with any human being.'" This Surah depicts a human being in unbearable pain. What makes the pain tolerable is the sympathy that God shows for Mary. Hearing her inner voice, understanding her suffering and her grief, God is moved to provide her with practical and substantive support to help her bear her agony. For me this story portrays a God who is active in the world, hears the supplications of humanity, and has empathy with the needy, the oppressed, and those who are suffering. Yet I am concerned that our theological traditions in the Islamic world (as also in Christendom) have developed through the centuries such that God is now seen, by overwhelming theological consensus, as an immutable being, a being outside time who has determined our providence from the standpoint of eternity, who has foreknowledge of every free action of his creations and has designed all according to His plan for past and future events; who knows in advance even the timings and contents of our petitionary prayers and has decided already whether to answer them. Aloof [End Page 188] from the mundane world, He has predetermined when and where he will act or intervene in our world; and since He is perfect, the world He has created is the most perfect that could have been actualized. Everything that happened in the world is according to God's predetermined plan, and even our supplications are in His plan and so every event has a role and special place in the jigsaw puzzle of the best-designed world. God, in this picture, is transcendent from our dirty and intractable material world. But when we read the text of the Qur'an free from such philosophical and theological doctrine, we are confronted with a God who is close to us, who has on occasion changed His verdicts (Q 2:106), who asks us to aid Him in order that He may aid us as well (Q 47:7), and who clearly and firmly introduces Himself as being close to us: "When My servants ask thee concerning Me, I am indeed close (to them); I listen to the prayer of every suppliant when he calls on Me" (Q 2:186). Nevertheless, theology matters. Theology is not merely a system of beliefs about a transcendental world or our personal relationship with the sacred. As Carol Christ explains, theology matters since our ideas about divinity play an essential role in the way we make sense of our religious experiences, our personal experiences, and even our experience of the world.1 The ethical implications of our theological views can and must be taken into consideration, because our understanding of divinity shapes our understanding of what is right, just, and wrong in the world. Theology matters because religious symbols not only articulate meaning, but also provide the grounds for our ethical decision-making, which in turn shapes our social-political order. Our understanding of the role of the state, the relation between I and Thou, family law, the constitutions of our societies—all of these depend to some extent on our theological backgrounds and views. Indeed, it is upon God that we would model our lives. As John Sanders writes: "The way God treats us is the way we should...