Pascal's Wager: Betcha Can't!

Blaise Pascal
Portrait by Jean Domat, around 1677-1681,
After a Portrait by Francois II Quesnel
Wikipedia

In "Can Wanting to Believe Make Us Believers?" (NYT, October 5, 2014; hat-tip to Pete Hale), Gary Gutting, professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, discusses the will to believe in God with Daniel Garber, professor of philosophy at Princeton who specializes in philosophy and science of the 16th and 17th centuries, and they touch on Pascal's famous wager (which I myself refer to in my novella):

Gary Gutting: Wanting to believe in God suggests Pascal's wager argument, which remains for many the most appealing case for religious belief. What do you think about it?

Daniel Garber: Formally, the argument has many well-known flaws, though it also has its friends. Even knowing the flaws, I do find myself somewhat moved by it. The reason is that at the core of the argument there are some very compelling intuitions. Basically, the argument turns on the idea that if there is a God, and we believe in him, we then have a shot at eternal happiness. If God doesn't exist, then we are stuck in this very finite and imperfect life, whether we believe in him or not. So, it would seem, for all sorts of reasons, we should want to believe in him. The problem (perhaps insuperable) is taking these plausible considerations and turning them into a genuine argument.

But the real worry about the argument comes at a later moment, I think. It is important to remember that Pascal's wager it isn't an argument for the truth of the proposition that God exists, but an argument for why we should want to believe that God exists: It only tells us that it is to our advantage to believe, and in this way makes us want to believe, but it doesn't give us any reasons to think that God actually exists. In a way, I'm already convinced that I should want to believe. But there is a step from there to actual belief, and that's a step I cannot personally negotiate. Pascal tells us, roughly, that we should adopt the life of the believer and eventually the belief will come. And maybe it will. But that seems too much like self-deception to me.

Gary Gutting: You seem to be ignoring what is often taken as the heart of Pascal's argument: a cost-benefit calculation that you should believe in God because the likely benefits of belief are greater than the likely benefits of nonbelief. Put that way, the argument seems morally dubious, leading to William James's comment that God would likely exclude from heaven precisely the sorts of people who believe because of such an argument. Is this a misreading of Pascal?

Readers interested in Garber's response can go to the article. I have my own problem with Pascal's Wager, a problem that goes unmentioned in the article, namely, that Pascal doesn't tell us which God we should believe in. Christianity's God? Or Islam's Allah? Or Hinduism's Brahma? Or some other differently conceived divinity? What happens if we back the wrong horse? Allah, for instance, seems unwilling to forgive Christians for their Trinitarianism.

One doesn't, therefore, make a single decision on where to put one's chips with this wager, but hedging one's bets presents the same problem.

And what if God doesn't like betting, anyway?

Allah 'Unlimited' by Reason?

Ibn Hazm

Cordoba, Spain

Google Images

I offer today another explanation by James V. Schall of theological voluntarism, which he expressed in an article titled "Regensburg Revisited: The Roots of Islamic Violence" (The Catholic Thing, October 1, 2013):

In its Muslim form, [theological voluntarism] . . . seems to be rooted in al-Ghazali and in Ibn Hazm, to whom Benedict referred. In Islam, the notion that God is limited by anything, even His own decrees or reason, is seen to be an insult to Allah. Allah can do the opposite of what he commands. He can call good evil and evil good. He is under no obligation to reveal truth to man. And if he does, he can change his mind and will the opposite later on. These positions are spelled out carefully in the Regensburg Lecture.

Thus, the philosophic root of violence means that such violence used to convert people is perfectly legitimate if Allah commands it, which he appears to do. To deny this possibility as "irrational" would be itself to blaspheme. We would claim that reason could limit the freedom of Allah to which we are to submit ourselves as the only reality to which we need to pay attention.

A question arises: Do al-Ghazali and in Ibn Hazm speak for Islam itself in their understanding of Allah's nature as arbitrary will?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: For God Before Caesar

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
NYT

In "Between God and the Führer," a review (August 8, 2014) by Randall Balmera of Charles Marsh's Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we read the following:

As a leader of what would become the Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer organized a school for dissident seminarians at Finkenwalde, near the Baltic Sea. Until it was closed down by the Gestapo in 1937, Finkenwalde immersed Bonhoeffer in Christian community, a place where, in his words, "the pure doctrine, the Sermon on the Mount, and worship are taken seriously" . . . . An avowed pacifist, Bonhoeffer secured an appointment with German military intelligence, which allowed him remarkable freedom to travel both in and out of Germany. His complicity in a plot to assassinate Hitler, however, sealed his fate, although his principal involvement lay in providing moral justification for tyrannicide.

Marsh contends that Bonhoeffer produced his finest work during his final months, including those in prison, where "the strenuous austerity of his writings" gave way to "a faith more open, munificent and sensuous." Here the paradox of a believer in the face of evil comes fully into focus. Bonhoeffer "gave his blessings to those who conspired to murder the Führer while affirming the essential nonviolence of the Gospel," Marsh writes, invoking Luther's dictum to sin boldly. "Bonhoeffer did not try to resolve the paradox by assuming moral innocence but accepted the paradox by incurring the guilt born out of responsible action."

Bonhoeffer evidently put God before 'Caesar,' but Islamists do the same, yet we judge them extremists. What is the difference? The difference between Allah as pure, absolute will for Islamists and God as rational in essence, at least in the best of Christianity?

An appeal to God's will alone is an appeal to ungrounded fideism, but that's the error Protestants most often fall into . . .

Nihilistically Nihilistic Nihilism?

Richard Fernandez

PJ Media

Richard Fernandez, who used to write under the pseudonym "Wretchard the Cat," has an intriguing post on nihilism titled "The Seven Gambit" -- a post I became aware of via my maverick friend Bill Vallicella -- and Fernandez writes:

Nihilism isn't the absence of a belief. It is something subtly different: it is the belief in nothing. The most powerful weapon of terrorism is therefore the unyielding No. "No I will not give up. No I will not tell the truth. No I will not play fair. No I will not spare children. No I will not stop even if you surrender to me; I will not cease even if you give me everything you have, up to and including your children's lives. Nothing short of destroying me absolutely can make me stop. And therefore I will defeat you even if you kill me. Because I will make you pay the price in guilt for annihilating me." (italics mine)

Fernandez applies this analysis to militant Islamism, which -- I suppose he infers -- extrapolates from Allah as Absolute Will to Allah as Nihilistic Force, and perhaps that's the case, implicitly, though I doubt that even Islamists carry this point to its full nihilistic conclusion since they do have a political aim, the establishment of a Caliphate to dominate the world and enforce Islamic law.

But that nihilistic point accounts for a lot since militant Islamists seem capable of any atrocity in the name of Allah, as if Allah's hands were unbound by any moral principles . . .

Mankind made in the image of Allah?

Islamic Adam and Eve

Not exactly your garden variety . . .

Manafi al-Hayawan (منافع الحيوان: Usefulness of Animals)

From Maragheh in Mongol Iran, 1294-99

(Image from Wikipedia)

Adam and Eve in this Muslim painting look rather different from the Adam and Eve usually seen in Western paintings. Eve in particular calls to mind images of the Buddha from Central Asia, which undoubtedly shows the influence of some tradition of painting from outside Islam itself.

Despite differences from the Western depictions of Adam and Eve, and despite what I've long heard and even accepted about Allah having no image and Islam rejecting the Jewish and Christian view of human beings being made in God's image, I have just learned that Islam does have traditions about man being made in the image of Allah.

I sometimes do wild Google searches, and yesterday, I was thinking about an article that I read over ten years ago about an aboriginal tribe of northern Australia that had some contact with traders from Indonesia prior to British colonization. This tribe had apparently learned something of the the traders' religion, and in the tribe's own tradition drew an image of Allah, perhaps the only one ever made (or so the article speculated). I was interested in finding that article and so performed the search that led to today's post.

I should interject that I've long held that the Qur'an's suras telling of Allah commanding the angels to bow down to the newly created Adam (7.11; 15.31-32; 38.74-75) presuppose that Adam was made in Allah's image (else why the command to bow down?). However, since I had been told, and had also read, that Islam rejects the belief that mankind was made in the image of Allah -- for Allah is totally other than anything created -- then I did not expect to find any Muslim acceptance of the so-called Imago Dei. But I found precisely this in a commentary on a hadith stating that "Allah created Adam in His image" -- and I have pasted the entire discussion by someone named Madarijas-Salikeen:

Commentary on the hadeeth, "Allaah created Adam in His image"

Question: When Prophet says "Allah created Adam in his image" what does "his image" refer to and how should we understand it?.

Answer: Praise be to Allaah.

Al-Bukhaari (6227) and Muslim (2841) narrated from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "Allaah created Adam in His image, and he was sixty cubits tall. When he created him he said, 'Go and greet that group of angels who are sitting and listen to how they greet you, for that will be your greeting and the greeting of your descendents.' So he said, 'Al-salaamu 'alaykum (peace be upon you),' and they said, 'Al-salaamu 'alayka wa rahmat-Allaah (Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allaah).' So they added (the words) 'wa rahmat-Allaah.' Everyone who enters Paradise will be in the form of Adam, but mankind continued to grow shorter until now."

Muslim (2612) narrated that Abu Hurayrah said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "When any one of fights his brother, let him avoid the face, for Allaah created Adam in His image."

Ibn Abi 'Aasim narrated in al-Sunnah (517) that Ibn 'Umar said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Do not say 'May Allaah deform your face' [a form of cursing in Arabic], for the son of Adam was created in the image of the Most Merciful." Shaykh 'Abd-Allaah ibn al-Ghunaymaan (may Allaah preserve him) said: "This hadeeth is saheeh and was classed as such by the imams and by Imam Ahmad and Ishaaq ibn Raahawayh. Those who classed it as da'eef have no evidence, except for the view of Ibn Khuzaymah, but those who classed it as saheeh are more knowledgeable than him.

I should interject here that there exist four categories of hadith based upon the hadith's isnad (chain of narrators): sahih (sound), hasan (good), da'if (weak), and maudu' (fabricated, forged). Apparently, there was a dispute over this hadith about Adam being created in the image of Allah (possibly due to Allah's utter otherness in Islamic theology?). But to return to Madarijas-Salikeen's discussion:

Ibn Abi 'Aasim also narrated (516) that Abu Hurayrah said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "When any one of you fights let him avoid the face, for Allaah created Adam in the image of His Face." Shaykh al-Albaani said: its isnaad is saheeh.

These two hadeeth indicate that the pronoun in the phrase "in His image" refers to Allaah, may He be glorified.

Al-Tirmidhi (3234) narrated from Ibn 'Abbaas that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "My Lord came to me in the most beautiful image and said, 'O Muhammad.' I said, 'Here I am at Your service, my Lord.' He said, 'What are the chiefs (angels) on high disputing about . . .'" Classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Tirmidhi.

According to the lengthy hadeeth about intercession, it says, ". . . then the Compeller (al-Jabbaar) will come to then in an image different than the image in which they saw Him the first time . . ." Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 7440; Muslim, 182.

From these ahaadeeth we learn that it is proven that Allaah has an image (soorah in Arabic), in a manner that befits Him, may He be glorified and exalted. His image is one of His attributes which cannot be likened to the attributes of created beings, just as His essence cannot be likened to their essence.

Again, I interject. Here, Madarijas-Salikeen appeals to Islamic orthodoxy in such a way as to interpret "image" in a sense other than its usual meaning, for if Allah's image is one of his 'attributes' and if Allah's attributes cannot be likened to attributes of created beings, then Madarijas-Salikeen is effectively denying that Adam was made in Allah's image, for an image means a likeness. Obviously, the argument in sophisticated Islamic commentary would be rather complex and would explicate the nuances of the Arabic term for "image" . . . but ultimately, the hadith is rendered meaningless if "image" means "not in the likeness of." Madarijas-Salikeen deals with this very issue in a typical way by denying that image implies any sort of likeness. The point seems to be that a likeness would have to be exact, whereas an image is not exact. The problem that I see here is that even an image implies resemblance, even if one is not speaking of physical resemblance. The term "image" is thus emptied of meaning, as we shall see when Ibn Qutaybah says that "Allaah" having an "image" is accepted by Muslims along with Allah's other attributes, "but we do not discuss how any of them are":

Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah said: "The word soorah (image) in this hadeeth is like all the other names and attributes narrated (in the texts) where the words used may also be applied to created beings, in a limited manner. When these words are applied to Allaah, they carry a unique meaning, such as al-'Aleem (All Knowing), al-Qadeer (All-Powerful), al-Raheem (Most Merciful), al-Samee' (All Hearing), al-Baseer (All-Seeing), and such as His creating with His hands, rising above the Throne, etc." Naqd al-Ta'sees, 3/396

Everything that exists must inevitably have a form or image. Shaykh al-Islam said: "Just as everything that exists must have attributes that, so too everything that exists by itself must have a form or image. It is impossible for something that exists by itself not to have a form or image."

And he said: "There was no dispute among the salaf of the first three generations that the pronoun in the hadeeth refers to Allaah, and it is narrated through many isnaads from many of the Sahaabah. The contexts of the ahaadeeth all indicate that . . . but when al-Jahamiyyah became widespread in the third century AH, a group began to say that the pronoun refers to something other than Allaah, and this was transmitted from a group of scholars who are known to have knowledge and to follow the Sunnah in most of their affairs, such as Abu Thawr, Ibn Khuzaymah, Abu'l-Shaykh al-Asfahaani and others. Hence they were denounced by the imams of Islam and other Sunni scholars."

Naqd al-Ta'sees, 3/202

Ibn Qutaybah (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: "That Allaah should have an image is no stranger than His having two hands, fingers or eyes. Rather those are readily accepted because they are mentioned in the Qur'aan, but this idea (image or form) is regarded as strange because it is not mentioned in the Qur'aan. But we believe in them all, but we do not discuss how any of them are."

Ta'weel Mukhtalif al-Hadeeth, p. 221

Shaykh al-Ghunaymaan said: "Thus it is clear that the form or image is like all the other divine attributes. Any attribute which Allaah has affirmed in the Revelation, we must affirm it and believe in it."

Sharh Kitaab al-Tawheed min Saheeh al-Bukhaari, 2/41

Shaykh Ibn Baaz (may Allaah have mercy on him) was asked: There is a hadeeth narrated from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) in which he forbids saying "May Allaah deform your face", and says that Allaah created Adam in His image. What is the correct belief with regard to this hadeeth?

He replied:

This hadeeth is proven from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), in which he said: "If any one of you strikes (another), let him avoid the face, for Allaah created Adam in His image." According to another version: "In the image of the Most Merciful." This does not imply resemblance or likeness.

What is meant, according to the scholars, is that Allaah created Adam with the ability to hear and see, and to speak when he wants. These are also attributes of Allaah, for He is All-Hearing, All-Seeing, and He speaks when He wants, and He has a Face, may He be glorified and exalted.

But it does not mean that there is any resemblance or likeness. Rather the image of Allaah is different from that of created beings. What is meant is that He is All-Hearing, All-Seeing, and He speaks when He wants, and He created Adam also able to hear and see, with a face and hands and feet. But man’s hearing is not like Allaah's hearing, his seeing is not like Allaah's seeing, his speaking is not like Allaah's speaking. Rather Allaah has attributes that befit His majesty and might, and man has attributes that befit him, attributes that are finite and imperfect, whereas the attributes of Allaah are perfect, with no shortcomings, infinite and without end. Hence Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

"There is nothing like Him, and He is the All‑Hearer, the All‑Seer" [al-Shoora 42:11]

"And there is none co-equal or comparable unto Him" [al-Ikhlaas 112:4]

So it is not permissible to strike the face or say "May Allaah deform your face".

End quote. Majmoo' Fataawa al-Shaykh, 4/226

Another thing that will help to explain the meaning of this hadeeth is the words of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him): "The first group to enter Paradise will be in the image of the moon (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 3245; Muslim, 2834." What the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) meant here is that the first group will be in human form, but because of their purity, beauty and brightness of face they will look like the moon, so they are likened to the moon, but without resembling it. So just because a thing is said to be in the image of a thing it does not mean that it is like it in all aspects.

The Prophet's words, "Adam was created in His image" means that Allaah created Adam in His image, for He has a face, an eye, a hand, and a foot, and Adam had a face, an eye, a hand, and a foot . . . but that does not mean that these things are exactly the same. There is some similarity, but it is not exactly the same. Similarly the first group to enter Paradise are likened to the moon, but they are not exactly the same. This confirms the view of Ahl al-Sunnah wa'l-Jamaa'ah, who say that none of the attributes of Allaah can be likened to the attributes of created beings, without distorting or misinterpreting, or discussing how or likening Him to His creation.

See Sharh al-'Aqeedah al-Waasitah by Shaykh Muhammad ibn 'Uthaymeen, 1/107, 293.

For more information, see: Sharh Kitaab al-Tawheed min Saheeh al-Bukhaari by Shaykh al-Ghunaymaan, 2/33-98, in which he quotes at length from Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah (may Allaah have mercy on him), refuting the misinterpretation of this hadeeth by ahl al-kalaam and those who agreed with them.

And Allaah knows best.

Well, I have certainly learned a great deal from this, namely, that Adam was made in Allah's image but that "image of Allah" in Islamic orthodoxy is emptied of any meaning that Muslims can understand.

There seems to be a type of 'agnosticism' at the core of Islam, an acceptance that nothing can be truly known about Allah. One can only submit to the Qur'anic revelation, for Allah is so utterly beyond human categories that one cannot reason about Him . . . which returns us to the issue that got Pope Benedict XVI in trouble in Regensburg.

But that's a different blog entry . . . or series of blog entries.

Hans Blumenberg: Augustine's Voluntarist God

Papal Keys

One for reason,

one for voluntarism?

(Image from Papal See Site)

According to Hans Blumenberg, Augustine enters into a discussion of miracles and the regularity of nature and emphasizes God's role in disrupting nature's 'regularity' because "he fears a lawfulness to which appeal can be made, which would give legitimacy to the human inquisitive drive and would leave behind it on account of its insistence on rationality, only a restricted acknowledgment of God's free will" (Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, page 320).

Augustine notes a report in the work Roman Genealogy, by Marcus Terentius Varro (BC 116-27), and Blumenberg summarizes Augustine's use of Varro's report:

[A]n account is given of an alteration in the color, size, shape, and path of the planet Venus in the early epoch of the kings, a unique phenomenon never observed before or after. This testimony is cited in order to show the possibility of a natural object at a particular point in time exhibiting behavior different from what it had been seen to exhibit at all other times and what had been held to be its essential nature. From such a beginning, he could quite well have gone on to explain the unusualness of the phenomenon as subjective, in accordance with the formula that the miracle contradicts not nature but merely the nature that is known to us. This would have meant a broadening, but not an alteration, of the 'cosmos' concept: The regularity of nature would have been assumed as not indeed universally verifiable but still pregiven in principle. But Augustine does not hold to this line, and it was to have incalculable consequences for the history of Christian theology that he feared involvement in the cognitive pretension and in the exclusion of voluntarism more than he sought rationality. "So great an author as Varro," Augustine writes, "would certainly not have called this a portent had it not seemed to be contrary to nature. For we say that all portents are contrary to nature; but they are not so. For how is that contrary to nature that happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature but contrary to what we know as nature."

So far he seems to have succeeded in reconciling to some extent the rationality of the cosmos and the volitional nature of the biblical God. But evidently this result does not satisfy Augustine's theological zeal, and consequently he forces the concept of law and the metaphor of the ruler into an antithesis that is certainly unexpected after what has just been said: "What is there so arranged by the Author of the nature of heaven and earth as the exactly ordered course of the stars? What is there established by laws to sure and so inflexible? And yet, when it pleased Him Who with sovereignty and supreme power regulates all He has created, a star conspicuous among the rest by its size and splendor changed its color, size, form, and, most wonderful of all, the order and law of its course!" It is not evident at first glance why Augustine goes further here than is required by his premise of the subjectivity of 'miracles' in nature. But on closer inspection it turns out that the train of thought contains a point directed against curiositas: Augustine believes that he has found the meaning of God's forcible intervention in the lawfulness of nature in the fact that it breaks through and frustrates the presumptuous claim of scientific exactitude to know the laws of nature and with their help to predetermine events... (Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pages 320-321).

On this point, Blumenberg observes wryly that "Only the sovereign act of intervention, putting in question all claims to theoretical 'exactiness' (inerrabilis computatio), is seen as the point of the story" (Blumenberg, Legitimacy, 321). He then adds some elaboration:

Nature is not set free as the final authority and embodiment of everything dependable, on which the human relation to reality can be based. The conflict between the idea of the cosmos and voluntarism is decided for the Middle Ages, and at the same time those premises are designated, by implication, whose secural had to become necessary in order to constitute an idea of science that was to make the absolute dependability of nature a condition of human self-assertion (Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pages 321-322).

Here, Blumenberg alludes to an irony unintended by Augustine, namely, that the latter's emphasis upon theological voluntarism implied what would be necessary for overcoming that voluntarism -- and in that ironic sense contributed to the emergence of science in early Modernity.

Although Pope Benedict XVI, in his Regensberg address, contrasted the theological voluntarism of Islam's Allah with the more rational concept of God in Christianity, while acknowledging that such voluntarism was also present as a Nominalist 'episode' in the development of Christian theology, from Blumenberg's discussion of Augustine, we see that the problem posed by theological voluntarism runs deeper in Christianity.

Moreover, Augustine is no peripheral theologian like Ibn Hazm but a major figure who has left his mark on all succeeding Western Christian theology, whether Catholic or Protestant, and Augustine's oscillation between a rational and a voluntarist God suggests that the Hellenization of Christianity was less synthesis and more unstable coalition.

Islam as a 'pagan' religion?

Nicolas Poussin, The Adoration of the Golden Calf

Worshipping a false god as the true one?

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've somewhere read that Aquinas wrote his Summa contra Gentiles to be used in efforts toward converting Muslims to the Christian faith, the term "Gentiles" thus referring to "Muslims" and implying that Muslims were pagans, with whom one could not use the Old Testament for prooftexting and for whom one therefore had to turn to the light of natural reason.

Perhaps natural reason also wouldn't work if Allah is a radically voluntarist deity . . . but let that be.

I'm more interested in the Aquinas's implication that Islam is a sort of 'higher' Paganism rather than a 'lower' Christianity, if such is his view. Islam viewed as a pagan religion has recently resurfaced in the argument put forth by Alain Besançon in his article "What kind of religion is Islam?" for Commentary (May 2004), whose central point is that:

[W]hen Christians and Jews approach Islam . . . [they] may well be struck by the religious zeal of the Muslim toward a God whom they recognize as being also their God. But this God is in fact separate and distinct, and so is the relation between Him and the believing Muslim. Christians are accustomed to distinguish the worship of false gods -- that is, idolatry -- from the worship of the true God. To treat Islam suitably, it becomes necessary to forge a new concept altogether, and one that is difficult to grasp -- namely, an idolatry of the God of Israel. To put it another way, Islam may be thought of as the natural religion of the revealed God.

Besançon's point is an intriguing one but not easy to grasp. Perhaps he means that from a Christian perspective, Muslims have focused on the correct 'God' but that they worship Him in the manner that 'pagans' worship an 'idol'. You'll not my 'scare quotes', intended to alert the reader to a special use of these terms. Go and read Besançon's article at Commentary, for which one needs a subscription, unfortunately.

But while one is waiting for that subscription to take effect, one can read another online article that treats Islam as a sort of pagan religion. This article is now available to nonsubscribers and can be found at First Things, where the pseudonymous "Spengler" (of the Asia Times Online) has published "Christian, Muslim, Jew: Franz Rosenzweig and the Abrahamic Religions" (October 2007). As implied by the title, Spengler presents Rosenzweig on Islam (along with Christianity and Judaism).

Spengler notes that:

At first glance, Rosenzweig's characterization of Islam as pagan appears strange, for we habitually classify religions according to their outward forms and identify paganism with manifestations of polytheism or nature worship. Insisting on the uniqueness of Allah and suppressing outward expressions of idolatry, Islam appears the opposite of a pagan religion. Rosenzweig, however, requires us to see faith from the existential standpoint of the believer, who in revealed religion knows God through God's love. For Rosenzweig, paganism constitutes a form of alienation from the revealed God of Love; Allah, the absolutely transcendent God who offers mercy but not unconditional love, is therefore a pagan deity.

The term 'pagan' is again being used in a particular sense, this time by the Jewish thinker Franz Rosenzweig, writing in The Star of Redemption (1921), as reported by the apparently Christian "Spengler," who comments approvingly upon this use.

From a secular perspective, of course, Islam is yet another monotheism . . . like Judaism and Christianity. But from a Jewish or Christian perspective, what is one to make of it since its status as a 'revealed' religion is highly suspect, to put things mildly?

I leave it to the readers to decide, but you'll first have to read Besançon and "Spengler" to see for yourselves.

"Islamic ethics tends toward extreme theological voluntarism."

Qur'an, Ninth Century

إِنَّمَا قَوْلُنَا لِشَيْءٍ إِذَا أَرَدْنَاهُ أَن نَّقُولَ لَهُ كُن فَيَكُونُ

"For to anything which We have willed,

We but say the word, 'Be', and it is."

(Yusuf Ali, translator, Ayah 40, Qur'an)

Small Telyashayakh Mosque, Tashkent

(Image from Wikipedia)

The heading to this day's blog entry comes from an article by Daniel W. Brown.

You may recall that I cited him yesterday on Islamic divine voluntarism. Who, therefore, is Daniel W. Brown, and what are his credentials? According to Cultural Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture, Dr. Brown has the following credentials:

Dr. Daniel Brown has lived in Egypt and in Pakistan where he was born and spent his first eighteen years. In 1993 he received his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago. He has been a visiting scholar at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, the Institute of Islamic Culture in Lahore, and Cairo University and has taught Islamic Studies at Mount Holyoke, Amherst and Smith Colleges.

Since 1997 he has been Pastor of Stony Brook Community Church in South Hadley, Massachusetts. He is the author of Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 1999) and A New Introduction to Islam (Blackwell, 2003).

From this information, I'd say that Dr. Brown appears reputable and trustworthy.

With that in mind, let me return to the passage that I cited yesterday, within the context of the passage in which it occurs:

Islam might be considered the defining case of ethical voluntarism. Among most Sunni Muslim scholars, past and present, voluntarism has been an undisputed assumption of Islamic ethical theory, finding reflection in Islamic credal formulations.

We confess that the decision concerning good and evil wholly depends on Allah. For whoever should say that the decision regarding good and evil depends upon another than Allah would thereby be guilty of unbelief regarding Allah, and his confession of the unity of Allah would become invalid. (Wasiyat Abi Hanifa, art. 6. Cited in A.J. Wensinck, Muslim Creed: Its Genesis and Historical Development (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1965), 126)

Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) offers the following stark elaboration of the majority position:

If God the Exalted had informed us that he would punish us for the acts of others . . . or for our own obedience, all that would have been right and just, and we should have been obliged to accept it. (Ibn Hazm, al-fisal fi'l-milal wa-l-ahwa' wa-n-nihal, 5 vols. (Cairo, 1890-1903), 3:92. Cited in Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 174)

As Ibn Hazm's statement implies, and as Hourani points out, Muslim theologians, including al-Ash'ari (d. 935), Ibn Hazm and al-Ghaziili (d. llll), did not shy away from the most extreme consequences of voluntarism: Should God have commanded theft and idolatry it would have been right for humans to commit them. (Hourani, Reason and Tradition, 59)

Ethical voluntarism reinforces and is reinforced by the general tenor of Ash'arite theology, with its characteristic emphasis on the overwhelming power and sovereignty of God at the expense of human freedom. In the words of a standard credal formulation: "Allah has created the creatures, who are devoid of power because they are weak and impotent, whereas Allah is their creator and their sustenance; as He says: 'It is God who created you, who fed you, who, later, will cause you to die, and then will make you alive'" (Wasiyat Abi Hanifa, art. 12, in Wensinck, Muslim Creed, 126). Voluntarism accords well with such a view of the overwhelming power of the creator and the utter dependence of the creature. Further, voluntarism grants to God complete freedom -- He is unbound by any external standard of good, evil or justice. (Daniel W. Brown, "Islamic Ethics in Comparative Perspective," The Muslim World, Volume 89, Number 2, April 1999, pages 183-4)

Dr. Brown was writing this in 1999, two years prior to September 11, 2001, so he had no obvious axe to grind, and since he seems to have credentials and to be trustworthy, I see no reason to discount his presentation of the standard Sunni Muslim view of Allah's ethical directives as voluntarist and his treatment of Ibn Hazm's view as normative.

Now, this does not mean that a Muslim can do whatever he pleases, so I don't entirely agree with my friend Bill Vallicella's formulation of the problem:

The Muslim view is quite 'chilling' if one thinks about it. If God is not contrained by anything, not logic, not morality, then to use the words but reverse the sense of the famous Karamazov passage, "everything is permitted." In other words, if the Muslim god exists then "everything is permitted" just as surely as "everything is permitted" if the Christian god does not exist. In the latter case, everything is permitted because morality has no foundation. In the former case, everything is permitted because morality's foundation is in Absolute Whim.

To put it in another way, a foundation of morality in unconstrained and unlimited will is no foundation at all.

To 'feel the chill,' couple the Muslim doctrine about God with the Muslim literalist/fundamentalist doctrine that his will is plain to discern in the pages of the Koran. Now murder can easily be justified, the murder of 'infidels' namely, on the ground that it is the will of God. (William F. Vallicella, "Islam and the Euthyphro Problem," Maverick Philosopher, November 5, 2007)

Although one can conclude from Islamic divine voluntarism that 'everything is permitted' to Allah, one cannot infer that 'everything is permitted' to those who submit to Allah. Muslims must follow Allah's ethical directives . . . whatever they happen to be.

As to precisely what Allah's ethical commands entail . . . well, that is the 72-virginal-houri question.

Yet More on Limits to the Divine Will

Islam

Bowing to Allah's Arbitrary Will?

(Image from Wikipedia)

By looking around more at the Chiesa website, I found a fuller version of Aref Ali Nayed's views. These occur in the same passage that I quoted from yesterday, but on a different Chiesa webpage, "Two Muslim Scholars Comment on the Papal Lecture in Regensburg" (Sandro Magister, Chiesa, October 4, 2006), where Nayed comments upon a passage from the Pope's Regensberg lecture:

Benedict XVI, being a scholar of medieval theology knows that he can not deny certain facts:

"In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazm and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions."

This passage, while serving its author's ultimate goal of undermining the theologies mentioned in it, does at least show that Benedict XVI is somewhat aware that other possible theologies do exist, and that Muslim theologians were not alone in caring about the affirmation of God’s sovereignty against human pretensions to govern Him with human criteria.

Here, Nayed appears to be affirming that the voluntarist views of such Nominalists as Duns Scotus are precisely the same as the Muslim view of Allah, and if that is so, then Islam does hold that Allah can willfully flout that principle of noncontradiction. Nayed then dryly observes of the Pope that, "Unfortunately, he goes on to totally undermine such theologies as not being the true 'faith of the Church'." I can see that this is unfortunate for Nayed's claim that the Christian and Muslim views of the deity are identical, but it's certainly not 'unfortunate' for the Pope's argument.

Nayed's larger article is worth reading (despite its strongly ironic but misplaced jabs at Catholicism for its violent history and its deplorable Eurocentrism) but still doesn't seem to me to directly engage with the Pope's point about reason and the nature of God . . . or Allah.

More on Limits to the Divine Will

Pope Benedict XVI

Open to dialogue...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Concerning yesterday's blog entry on God's will being bound by limits that are grounded in God's nature, I've done a bit more digging about online and found an interesting exchange at the Chiesa website between a Catholic scholar of Medieval philosophy and theology, Alessandro Martinetti, and a learned Muslim theologian Aref Ali Nayed: "The Church and Islam: A Sprig of Dialogue Has Sprouted in Regensburg" (Sandro Magister, Chiesa, October 30, 2006)

On this site, Sandro Magister posts material from both Martinetti and Nayed. Apparently, Nayed maintains a website of his own and had responded to Pope Benedict XVI's remarks on Ibn Hazm's supposed 'voluntarism', namely, the view that Allah's will is supremely unlimited -- that He is free to contradict himself if He wishes. Nayed's initial response is not cited in full by Magister, but Martinetti quotes from it in his article:

"Unbridled will or Logos? The God of Islam and the Christian God," Alessandro Martinetti

In this article, Martinetti first quotes Nayed's own words:

Reason as a gift from God can never be above God. That is the whole point of Ibn Hazm; a point that was paraphrased in such a mutilated way by Benedict XVI's learned sources. Ibn Hazm, like the Asharite theologians with whom he often contended, did insist upon God's absolute freedom to act. However, Ibn Hazm did recognize, like most other Muslim theologians that God freely chooses, in His compassion towards His creatures, to self-consistently act reasonably so that we can use our reason to align ourselves with His guidance and directive.

Ibn Hazm, like most other Muslim theologians, did hold that God is not externally-bound by anything, including reason. However, at no point does Ibn Hazm claim that God does not freely self-commit Himself and honors such commitments Such divine free-self-committing is Qur'anically propounded 'kataba rabukum ala nafsihi al-Rahma' (Your Lord has committed Himself to compassion). Reason need not be above God, and externally normative to Him. It can be a grace of God that is normative because of God’s own free commitment to acting consistently with it.

A person who believes the last proposition need not be an irrational or un-reasonable human-being, with an irrational or whimsical God! The contrast between Christianity and Islam on this basis is not only unfair, but also quite questionable.

Granted that the Pontiff is striving to convince a secular university that theology has a place in that reason-based setting. However, this should not go so far as to make God subject to an externally-binding reason. Most major Christian theologians, even the reason-loving [Thomas] Aquinas never put reason above God.

Martinetti then observes:

In Nayed's view, then, saint Thomas "never put reason above God." But not placing reason above God is not the same thing as asserting, as Nayed does, that "God is not externally bound by anything, including reason," and that reason "can be a grace of God that is normative because of God's own free commitment to acting consistently with it."

Saint Thomas would never have subscribed to these assertions; on the contrary, he vigorously opposed them. And together with him, the Catholic magisterium does not agree with them, but disputes them. It thus rejects the depiction of a God who "freely chooses, in his compassion towards his creatures, to act reasonably in consistency with himself so that we can use our reason to align ourselves with His guidance and directives."

If asserting that reason is not normative for God, and that God is consistent with himself only out of a supremely free decision and is not externally bound to reason; if this is the same as asserting -- as it seems to me that Nayed does -- that God could exist and act in disdain of reason if only he wished to do so by an act of supreme and limitless freedom, then it is opportune to clarify that Thomas, and with him the Catholic magisterium, rejects this conviction, glimpsing in this an irrational voluntarism incompatible with right reason and with the Catholic faith, as the pope himself remarks in his "lectio" in Regensburg....

Martinetti's point would seem to be that in the Catholic view, reason is not something external to and higher than God that God must submit to, nor is reason merely a means of relating to humanity that God arbitrarily, and in an utterly unconstrained fashion, chooses to adopt.

Rather, God is rational because He is consistent with His own nature, which is a rational nature.

To Martinetti's point, Nayed responds in a follow-up article:

"Our God and Your God is One," by Aref Ali Nayed

In this, he insists that Aquinas and Ibn Hazm agree on God's unconstrained will:

Aquinas affirms, just as most Muslim theologians do, that God is omnipotent and that His Power and Will are utterly efficacious: "God is bound to nobody but Himself. Hence, when it is said that God can only do what He ought, nothing else is meant by this than that God can do nothing but what is befitting to Himself, and just".

"Although this order of things be restricted to what now exists, the divine power and wisdom are not thus restricted. Whence, although no other order would be suitable and good to the things which now are, yet God can do other things and impose upon them another order".

Nayed's citation of Aquinas here misses the point made by Martinetti. I think that when Nayed says that Islam maintains that 'Allah is bound to nothing but Himself' (if I may slightly paraphrase Nayed's citation of Aquinas), he means that Allah is bound by nothing but His own divine, unconstrained will. This is not what Aquinas means. When Aquinas says that 'God is bound to nothing but Himself' (again, my paraphrase), he means that God is bound by nothing but His own nature, which is rational.

Nayed has thus misunderstood Aquinas and thereby missed Martinetti's point.

Natural Law and Limits on the Divine Will

Allah

Humanity Confronted by Divine Will

Eski Cami (The Old Mosque) in Edirne, Turkey

(Image from Wikipedia)

In 1999, Edward T. Oakes published an interesting article in First Things, "Natural Law in Judaism," in which he looked at the work of David Novak (Natural Law in Judaism) on the "Euthyphro problem" in Judaism.

The "Euthyphro problem" refers to Socrates's dialogue with the Athenian seer Euthyphro, in which Socrates subjects the Greek gods to an ethical critique on the basis of the abstract norms of moral law, in the light of which, the behavior of gods like Zeus appear decidedly immoral.

The problem -- reputably a dilemma for revealed religions like Judaism and Christianity -- can be posed as follows: "Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?"

Oakes argues that in Judaism and Christianity, abstract moral law has triumphed over the conception of God as omnipotent Divine Will.

Oakes does not deal in detail with the implications of this for Christian theology (though others have more or less reconciled God with Natural Law). Instead, he observes, rather pragmatically, that this victory of natural law has an upside, one that becomes evident when compared to the absence of the concept in Islam:

That victory is not entirely a matter for dismay, in my opinion, as the example of Islam suggests. Consider the matter of the stoning of adulterers, which, to the great horror of Westerners, is part of Islamic jurisprudence. That practice, as it happens, is not required by the Qur'an. In fact, it was introduced into Islam from Jewish law, according to an oral tradition transmitted by the second Caliph of Medina, Umar ibn al-Khattab (reigned a.d. 634-644):

They brought to the Prophet, on whom be God's blessing and peace, a Jew and a Jewess who had committed fornication. He said to them, "What do you find in your book?" They said, "Our rabbis blacken the faces of the guilty and expose them to public ridicule." Abdullah ibn Salam [a convert to Islam from Judaism] said: "Messenger of God, tell the Jews to bring the Torah." They brought it, but a Jew put his hand over the verse which prescribes stoning [probably Deuteronomy 22:21-22] and began to read what came before and after it. Ibn Salam said to him, "Raise your hand," and there was the verse about stoning beneath his hand. The Messenger of God gave the order and they were stoned. . . . They were stoned on the level ground and I [Umar] saw the man leaning over the woman to shield her from the stones.

Now, Muhammad is obviously thinking of Moses when he orders the stoning of the fornicating pair, but the crucial point is that the Mosaic law being enforced here has reached the Prophet unmediated by either Talmud or New Testament. Moreover, for accidental reasons of history, Islam never passed through the "fiery brook" of the Enlightenment; its confrontation with Judaism and Christianity in the contemporary world is often intertwined with a simultaneous confrontation with the Enlightenment. The clash gets even more complicated by Islam's much higher doctrine of revelation, which makes an accommodation with secular Enlightenment morality even more painful than has proved to be the case with Judaism and Christianity. (Islam's high doctrine of revelation had such difficulty conceding legitimacy to the deliverances of reason that it eventually deprived Muslim philosophers of the oxygen needed for independent, rational reflection; and Muslim philosophy almost entirely died out with the death of Averroës in a.d. 1198.)

At least in certain formal respects, Islam can be described, after a fashion, as "Judaism without a Euthyphro problem," or Moses without a Talmud, so to speak-as the civil war in Algeria so amply testifies, where the most horrific acts of barbarity are perpetrated under religious auspices and in the name of the God of revelation. The Euthyphro problem lives on in today's headlines, and it seems to me that David Novak needs to probe this issue more deeply, for his own (admittedly quite mild) Enlightenment-bashing leaves him with more problems than he seems to realize. (Edward T. Oakes, "Natural Law in Judaism," First Things, 1999, Part IV, paragraphs 4-5)

Islam lacks a Euthyphro dilemma because it simply denies the problem, holding that what is moral is moral because it is commanded by Allah. This is what Pope Benedict XVI was referring to in his Regensberg address when he noted that the Muslim thinker "Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry."

Quoting that got the Pope a lot of bad press, but Ibn Hazm's conclusion is the problem that the world faces in the Islamic refusal to put limits upon Allah's will.

The problem was posed with particular acuteness by the Jesuit James Schall, professor of political philosophy at Georgetown University, in an interview about the Pope's Regensberg address. Schall's words were published in ZENIT: The World Seen From Rome as the article "God as Logos, Allah as Will":

The Holy Father posed the fundamental question that lies behind all the discussion about war and terror. If God is Logos, it means that a norm of reason follows from what God is. Things are, because they have natures and are intended to be the way they are because God is what he is: He has his own inner order.

If God is not Logos but "Will," as most Muslim thinkers hold Allah to be, it means that, for them, Logos places a "limit" on Allah. He cannot do everything because he cannot do both evil and good. He cannot do contradictories.

Thus, if we want to "worship" Allah, it means we must be able to make what is evil good or what is good evil. That is, we can do whatever is said to be the "will" of Allah, even if it means doing violence as if it were "reasonable."

Otherwise, we would "limit" the "power" of Allah. This is what the Pope meant about making violence "reasonable." This different conception of the Godhead constitutes the essential difference between Christianity and Islam, both in their concept of worship and of science.

Finding an authoritative voice is not easy in a religion so decentralized as Islam, but perhaps the words of Abdul M. Omar can be cited as representative, for he was the editor of a 22-volume Encyclopedia of Islam, and in an online article, he states the following:

He is Incomprehensible, and nothing is like him, therefore the knowledge of Allâh's Reality (His Essence, Haqîqat al-Dzât), cannot be known through logical proof (Dalîl) or rational considerations (Burhân Aqlî). Revelation is indispensable as a proof of His existence. Nor can any definition or description grasp Him. (See: A. M. Omar, "2. Allâh -- The God of the Holy Qur'ân," paragraph 6, in online article, "Who is Allah?")

Although the reference to "His Essence, Haqîqat al-Dzât," might imply that Allah has a 'nature', Omar is quick to insist of Allah that "There is nothing like Him (He is beyond all comparison)" ("2. Allâh -- The God of the Holy Qur'ân," paragraph 4). If Allah is beyond all comparison, then he can be known only through revelation, as Omar also insists, but such a revelation would not touch on Allah's nature in any substantive sense but merely inform us of how he intends for us to submit to his will, which cannot be questioned.

But this is a complex issue requiring closer philosophical reasoning, and I'm not sure that I'm up to the task, though my friend Bill Vallicella would certainly be able to handle it.

"What Kind of Religion Is Islam?"

"Allāh" in Arabic Calligraphy

(Non-Image from Wikipedia)

Over at Maverick Philosopher, the resident maverick Bill Vallicella, who has recently read the Jesuit scholar James V. Schall's article "Belloc on the 'Apparently Unconvertible' Religion" (which explores Hilaire Belloc's views on Islam), has posted a provocative quote from the article:

Belloc's thesis is that Islam began as a Christian heresy which retained the Jewish side of the faith, the Oneness and Omnipotence of God, but denied all the Christian aspects –- the Incarnation, the divinity of Christ, who, as a result, became just a prophet. The denial of the church, the priesthood, and the sacraments followed. Islam succeeded because, in its own terms, it was a simple religion. It was easy to understand and follow its few doctrinal and devotional points.

James V. Schall, S. J., in Vital Speeches of the Day, LXIX (April 1, 2003), 375-82

I reacted to Schall's quote by suggesting that Islam began as a pagan religion that merged pagan belief in a high God with Judeo-Christian monotheism:

I disagree that Islam is a Christian heresy. Muhammad was likely never a Christian despite having a Christian woman as his first wife.

Rather, he was a pagan attracted to the monotheism of both Judaism and Christianity and who began to have religious experiences that he interpreted as revelations.

Muhammad -- in my opinion -- borrowed elements from Judaism and Christianity and joined them to Arab paganism's views on a high God ruling above all.

Alain Besançon calls Islam an "idolatry of the God of Israel" in this passage from his article in the May 2004 issue of Commentary ("What Kind of Religion is Islam"):

"Christians are accustomed to distinguish the worship of false gods -- that is, idolatry -- from the worship of the true God. To treat Islam suitably, it becomes necessary to forge a new concept altogether, and one that is difficult to grasp-namely, an idolatry of the God of Israel."

This is a fascinating suggestion, namely, that Islam worships the true God but in an idolatrous manner. (Muslims need not react too angrily to this critique, for they level similar sort of charge against Christians.)

Anyway, I sense what Besançon was getting at, namely, that Muslims worship the God of Israel but as if he were their old pagan high God ... but I wish that Besançon had explained a bit more clearly what this entails.

Bill responded:

Thanks for your excellent contribution. Question: Couldn't Islam be a Xian heresy even though Muhammad was not a Xian? Is it a necessary condition of a heresy's being a heresy that the proponent of it be a member of the religion the heresy is a deviation from? I merely pose this as a question. I haven't thought about it until just now -- thanks to you, most esteemed cyber-colleague....

"This is a fascinating suggestion, namely, that Islam worships the true God but in an idolatrous manner." Yes it is fascinating, but also unclear. A Plotinian might say that Xians worship the true Absolute, the One, but in an idolatrous manner: they make of the impersonal One a person. And Muslims might say that Xians are idolaters since they import a man, Jesus, into the Godhead. Tough questions here.

I then replied to Bill's point about heresy, in which I made an honorable retreat:

Bill, you asked:

"Couldn't Islam be a Xian heresy even though Muhammad was not a Xian? Is it a necessary condition of a heresy's being a heresy that the proponent of it be a member of the religion the heresy is a deviation from?"

Yes, I think that you're correct. Even without Muhammad being a Christian, he could have constructed a Christian heresy. I could construct an Islamic heresy without ever being a Muslim -- so long as I'm cynical about what I'm doing. If I'm not cynical, then I'm actually a heretical Muslim. Heresies, after all, are usually understood to be within a religion -- the enemy within, as is sometimes said.

So if Islam is a Christian heresy, and if Muhammad was sincere, then he was a Christian heretic ... as all Muslims would be.

But I don't think that Islam is a Christian heresy. It's a different religion, more different from Christianity than Judaism is from Christianity (in my opinion).

Doubtless, this dialogue will go on and on, but Besançon's question remains: "What kind of religion is Islam?"

And Besançon's own answer -- that it's "an idolatry of the God of Israel" -- is one that I'm still puzzling over.