Muslim and Christian Philosophy, a tight connection

Muslim and Christian Philosophy, a tight connection

Without Arabic-Islamic and also Jewish philosophy, it would have been impossible for philosophy to develop in the West as it did. Take for instance, Avicenna’s idea of God. He devised a new conception of God that reconciles the pagan Greek eternity of the world with the monotheistic idea of creation and divine unity. Avicenna’s conception of God as necessary being, wājib al-wujūd in Arabic and necesse esse in Latin, reached Thomas Aquinas through the Jewish philosopher Mose Maimonides. Aquinas, a landmark of Christian philosophy who was to become later one of the greatest authorities of the Catholic Church, developed this Avicennan idea further and used it as a basis for the fifth of his five ways to prove the existence of God.

Everything, other than God, is a possible being. A possible being is something that can both be and not be. Neither its being nor its non-being lead to any contradiction. If possible beings do exist, it is only thanks to some other being that has caused and sustained their being. This other being is, or must eventually lead to, one single necessary being that exists by and in itself that Avicenna identifies as God. This God lends the world its existence. Avicenna puts forth a philosophical conception of eternal creation that was thought to be impossible up to that point.

But can such a God be a person? Can he be free? Does he know about the world and what’s going on in it? Does he care about us? These and many other complex issues surrounding the Avicennan conception of God and its cons and pros engaged and stimulated philosophers over hundreds of years to witness the unparalleled philosophical attractiveness of Avicennan ideas. Thus, he left his fingerprints not only on the intellectual roots of Muslims, but also those of Jews and Christians.

 

Article written by Mostafa Najafi