God’s Omnipotence and Impossibility in al-Ghazālī and Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

During the Middle Ages, most theological and philosophical works were translated into Latin language, such as Avicenna’s al-Shifā: Ilahiyāt(The Metaphysics of The Healing),al-Ghazālī’s Maqāsıd al-falāsifa(The Aims of Philosophers), and Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle’s books. Thanks to these translations, Latin world have got acquainted with various controversial issues in the Islamic thought, such as whether “God knows particulars in their essence”, “whether God acts necessarily because of His nature” and “whether reason and revelation can be reconciled or not” conveyed into Latin West. In addition to these issues, Latin thinkers have also got to know the problem of what scope of God’s absolute power. In this paper, I tried to show the idea that God can do what is logically possible and this does not limit God’s absolute power was conveyed in to Latin West because of translation of Avicenna’s al-Shifāand al-Ghazālī’s Maqāsıdal-falāsifa. As far as I can see, there is drastic textual similarity between idea of al-Ghazālīand Thomas Aquinas about this matter. Based on the similarities between al-Ghazālīand Aquinas, it is highly probable that Aquinas’ idea about God’s power goes back to Islamic tradition.

Keywords

• Philosophy of Religion
• Impossibility
• Necessity
• God’s Omnipotence
• al-Ghazālī
• Aquinas
• Thomas Aquinas
• Din Felsefesi
• İmkānsızlık
• Zorunluluk
• Tanrı’nın Kudreti
• Gazzālî
• Thomas Aquinas