Necessary Existent in Islamic Philosophy and the (Im)personal God

Abstract

There are principles in Islamic Philosophy which serve as evidence in favor of the view that Muslim philosophers understand Necessary Existent to be “personal”. The principles include “division of beings into necessary and contingent while accepting univocity of existence”, “The demand of Necessary Existent for evidence”, “univocity of Necessary Existent’s attributes and those of contingent beings”, “application of personal beings’ predicates to Necessary Existent”, “understanding revelation as speech”, “personal account of God in the course of prayer”, etc. There are, however, some other pieces of evidence that indicate impersonality of Necessary Existent, e.g. “Theory of Emanation”, “pure simplicity of Necessary Existent”, “Infinity of Necessary Existent”, “Apophaticity in religious language”, and “denial of independent existence of caused being”. The latter pieces of evidence show, at least, that there is an ambiguity in understanding whether the concept of Necessary Existent in Islamic philosophy indicates an (im)personal God. At most, they demonstrate that the concept of Necessary Existent in Islamic philosophy is more compatible with an impersonal notion of God. In this article, while giving some points on the strong claim, I shall argue for the weak one.

Keywords

• necessary existent
• personal god
• impersonal god
• imagination of god