4.

The Aristotelian Tradition: from Kalam to Scholastics

Definition of Kalam

Meaning: ‘conversation’: Kalam is a medieval Islamic religious philosophy, having either

distinctly rationalistic (Mutasilites) or distinctly anti-rationalistic character (Asharites). It
develops from the 8th to 12th century in the region of Islamicate (i.e. the region of the strong
influence of Islam). The followers of kalam are mutakallimun (in Hebrew version:
motekallemim) and oppose themselves to falasifa, “the philosophers.” While motekallemim
use philosophy for the apologetic purposes, where it is God’s glory which is the ultimate goal
of reasoning, the philosophers treat falsafa (philosophy) as a practice for its own sake.

Kalam is an important precursor of the Christian scholastics: via Avicenna, Averroes and
Maimonides (himself not a part of kalam but his descendant) the Christian world becomes
acquainted with Aristotle (or rather kalam’s typical Aristotelian Neoplatonism) who, after
kalam, will be called by Thomas of Aquinas “The Philosopher.” But not only: the Asharite
kalam (here most lf all Al-Ghazali) also exports to the Christian West the forgotten doctrine of
atomism, which will be very influential in the late scholastic movement called nominalism
(William Ockham, Peter Damiani, but then also John Calvin).

Mutasilites (“people of justice and unity”), active under the Ummayad dynasty
already in the second half of the 8th century. Kalam keeps very strict formal order
of reasoning based on five principles:

1. unity of God
2. divine justice
3. reward and punishment
4. classification of human actions and behaviour
5. enjoining good and preventing evil

Let us go through the first two main points:

1. Unity of God (the emergence of Theological Absolutism)

1. God is incorporeal (all antropomorhisms have to be explained in allegorical fashion).

2. God is unknowable: he has attributes of essence (inaccessible to us) and attributes
of action (in which he relates to us).
3. God is an almighty creator (which we can infer on the basis of his creations).
4. Creatio ex nihilo is explained in terms of atomistic philosophy (!). Kalam
differentiates between atoms of substance and atoms of qualities. Moreover, there is
no causality because the law of casality would undermine God’s absolute
omnipotency. Instead we get the principle of continuous creation as a perpetual
miracle (as later in Calvin!).
5. This is a pure theology of creation – against theology of nature, as we know it from
the Hellenistic period, deeply influenced by the Greek concept of physis. There are no
fixed laws of nature, rather God creates everything constantly as if from the scratch
(the primordial atoms which he created in the first place), by the power of his
absolute will.
6. God’s main characteristics is his absolute power and absolute will. Kalam gives us
the first voluntaristic conception of the deity.

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Divine Justice

1. God is self-sufficient, yet benevolent (He doesn’t need us, but He is not unfriendly).
2. God is under obligation to inform humans about His will and moral teaching (hence
revelation through prophecy). Later on, in late scholastics, this teaching will take the
form of the distinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata: God’s power
in itself (unbound and infinite) and God’s power in relation to the world (bound by
the fact of creation).

Soon the Mutasilite school will find an opposition in the theology of the Asharites.
Asharites (after Abul Hasan al-Ashari who died in 935) will attack the Mutasilite
philosophy as “too human,” that is still too strongly representing the interests of
human mind when confronted with the inscrutability of God’s will. In the 12 th century,
Al-Ghazali (died in 1111) becomes the greatest representative of Asharite Kalam and
manages to repress the Mutasilites completely. His main slogan is ‘the humbling of
reason’: prophecy is superior to reasoning and Scripture must be read “plainly” -
“without asking how.”

Asharites represent the extreme theological absolutism which is charaterised by:

1. Voluntarism (God’s chief attribute is inscrutable will)

2. Nominalism and atomism – against Platonism. This means that universe is
created perpetually through God exerting his powerful will on the swirl of atoms.
There are no universals, as in the Platonic vision of emanation, which are
responsible for the hierarchical structure of the world; as mediations, enjoying an
eternal status – as, e.g. active intellect or world soul – they would only endanger
God’s unique claim to eternity and absolute creative power. Nothing stands
between God and the created material world whose authorship is solely his.
(Compare this with the proto-emanationist vision of Philo, where God as the First
Principle is almost superseded by Logos, who in fact worls as the creative factor
of the whole universe).
3. Potentia absoluta and ‘infinite worlds’: the idea that God might be bound and
obliged by anything (like the creation of this world and us in it) is preposterous
and hubristic. There is no such thing as ‘bound power’: God is absolutely
omnipotent and non-concerned about what he creates. He creates infinite number
of worlds and none of them can lay claim on diminishing his power. He creates
this world, which is one among many, perpetually – and nothing stops him from
destroying it any moment he wishes.
4. Power as potency and potentiality (potentia). Asharite kalam shifts the
understanding of God’s power into the realm of pure potentiality: God is most
adequately characterised not by what he actually created, but by what he still
could create. The already existing worlds are, so to say, merely an obstacle
imposing limits on his still unmanifested potential creative power which always
transcends what is actually done and given. This reasoning is conducted on the
basis of Aristotle’s concept of potency-potentiality as dynamis. So far, attributed
only to matter and seen rather as a sign of matter’s deficiency (lack of actuality),
dynamis now begins to depict the highest attribute of the deity – this is a
revolutionary shift in the reception of Aristotelianism, which will radically
reconfigure the relation between act and potency, actuality and potentiality –
now in favour of the latter. (And create the modern world!)