Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

108 • The Making of Islamic Sciencewho based their proofs on the premise of its creation in time. Theissue of the eternity of the world and its creation was, therefore, themost central issue in the Muslim and Jewish philosophical traditionsduring the Middle Ages (Davidson 1987, 1). What was at stake wasnot merely hermeneutics, as the issue had a whole range of basicproblems attached to it, including the relationship between God andthe universe on the one hand and God and humanity on the other.Furthermore, it involved such questions as whether God is a necessaryor a voluntary cause. The most contended point revolved around thewill of the deity. If the world should be eternal, the deity’s relationshipto the universe would also be eternal.Since eternity and necessity are, by virtue of an Aristotelianrule, mutually implicative, an eternal relationship is arelationship bound by necessity; and necessity excludes will.The eternity of the world thus would imply that the deityis, as the cause of the universe, bereft of will. A beginning ofthe world would, by contrast, lead to a deity possessed of will.(Davidson 1987, 1–2)Though both premises could be used to construct proofs for theexistence of God, the deities arrived at through chain of reasoningbased on the two premises would be different. In the argument for theexistence of God as the prime mover, Aristotle demonstrated that theworld is eternal; its eternal existence is caused; and that this cause isthe deity. The Platonic procedure favored by the Kalam tradition, onthe other hand, takes creation as its indispensable premise. Since theworld came into existence after not having been existent, there mustbe a creator who brought it into existence. The deity shown to existby either procedure has three distinct qualities: it is a being whichis uncaused, incorporeal, and one. Proof based on the premise ofeternity does not show volition to be a characteristic of the deity. Thislack of volition became a point of contention. Some philosophers didnot take either of the two premises into consideration and so avoidedaltogether the issue of volition in the deity. Another procedure,adopted by Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185), Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas,was to use both premises to provide proofs for the existence of God.Ibn Tufayl noted in his celebrated philosophical tale Hayy Ibn Yaqzan(Living, Son of the Awake) that the issue was unresolvable, and that the