Theological Origins of Modernity

290 epilogue
faithful, and Christian barbarians marauding throughout the Caliphate.
He too had despaired. But during his wanderings, the Teacher had found a
new way, derived from the Sufi s, but now open to all the faithful who chose
to follow it. He taught them to lose themselves in God, to dwell in what lies
beyond words, in ecstasy, like the Prophet, beloved of God. Now, even if
their rulers failed them and they were beset by the ruffi ans and crusaders,
he knew that, God willing, the faithful would prosper and triumph. For
God is Great!
Th e teacher in this vignette was Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), after
the Prophet perhaps the most infl uential fi gure in all Islam. Orphaned
as a young boy, he studied Islamic law and theology under an Ash’arite
teacher and Sufi sm with a master in his native Tus. He later joined the
circle of scholars in Baghdad around the Seljuk Vizier Nizam-al Mulk
that included such luminaries as Omar Khayyam. He became the most
famous intellectual of his time, surrounded by scholars and students who
came from the ends of the earth to hear him speak. Aft er the death of the
vizier and the ensuing chaos described above, Ghazali, was plagued by
skeptical doubts that his philosophy could not answer. As he tells us in his
autobiography, Deliverance from Error, he vacillated for a time, unable to
decide between continuing his academic career and following a religious
and mystical path, but was fi nally overcome by a crisis that he took as a
sign to leave the academic world, adopt an ascetic way of life, and follow a
new path. It was this path that helped reshape Islam.
Islam developed in the period aft er Christianity had already become
the offi cial religion of the Roman world, and while it shared an Abrahamic
origin with Christianity, it diff ered in several crucial respects. First, there
was no notion of a human fall and thus no need of a redemption. As a
result, there was no doctrine of incarnation. In contrast to Christianity,
Islam rested not on the ontological connection of God and man but on
their absolute diff erence and thus on the necessity of the submission of
fi nite men to an infi nite God. Indeed, the term ‘Islam’ means submission.
Th e dominant school of Islamic theology (kalam) was founded by Ash’ari
(ca. 873-935) at the end of the ninth century and portrayed God as radically
omnipotent. Indeed, Ash’ari defended an occasionalist doctrine that
denied the effi cacy of all secondary causes and attributed everything to the
immediate causal power of God. From this Ash’arite point of view there
was thus no natural or mechanical causality, indeed no orderly fl ow of
events since everything, including all human volitions, acts, and cognitions,
are the direct creation of God. Th is belief put the Ash’arites fi rmly
in opposition to the Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism of the Mu’tazilites,