BELIEF IN GOD
BELIEF IN GOD
By Imam al-Ghazali
The Jerusalem Treatise
His Oneness
He is one in being without partner, unique without peer, ultimate without
opposite, alone without equal. He is one, preeternal, beginninglessly
uncreate, everlastingly abiding, unceasingly existent, eternally limitless,
the ever self-subsisting through whom all else subsists, ever enduring,
without end. He is, was, and ever will be possessed of all attributes
of majesty, unannihilated by dissolution or separation through the passage
of eons or terminus of interims. He is the First and Last, the Outward
and Inward, and He has knowledge of everything.
His Transcendence
He is not a body with a form, or a limitary, quantitative substance,
not resembling bodies in quantifiability or divisibility, or in being
a substance or qualified by substance, or being an accident or qualified
by accidents. He does not resemble anything that exists, nor anything
that exists resemble Him. There is nothing whatsoever like unto Him,
nor is He like unto anything. He is not delimited by magnitude, contained
by places, encompassed by directions, or bounded by heavens or earth.
He is 'ascendant over the Throne' (mustawin, Koran 20:5) in the way
He says and the meaning He intends, 'ascendant' in a manner transcending
contact, settledness, position, indwelling, or movement. The Throne
does not bear Him up, but is borne up by the subtlety of His infinite
power, as are the angels who carry it, and all are powerless in His
grasp. He is above the Throne, the heavens, and all else to the farthest
reaches of the stars, with an aboveness that does not increase His nearness
to the Throne or the heavens, or His distance from the earth and what
lies beneath it. He is as exalted in degree above the Throne and the
heavens as He is above the earth and its depths, though He is near to
everything in existence, nearer to a servant than his own jugular vein,
and is witness to everything. His nearness no more resembles the nearness
of objects to one another than His entity resembles the entities of
objects. He does not indwell in anything, nor anything indwell in Him.
He is as exalted above containment in space as He is above confinement
in time. He was, before creating time and space, and is now even as
He was. He is distinguished from His creation by His attributes. There
is nothing in His entity other than Him, nor is His entity in what is
other than Him. He is beyond change and motion: events neither occur
within Him nor changes befall Him. He remains in His attributes of majesty
exalted above change, and in the attributes of His perfection beyond
needing any increase in perfection. The existence of His entity is known
by human reason, and in the afterlife is beheld by the eyesight of the
righteous as a beatitude and favor, to consummate their perfect joy
with the sight of His Noble Countenance.
His Life and Almighty Power
He Most High is living, almighty, overmastering, triumphant, unaffected
by inability or weakness; unsusceptible to drowsiness, sleep, annihilation,
or death; possessed of absolute sovereignty and might, of irresistible
power and force. His is the majesty and sway, the creation and command.
The heavens are enfolded in His right hand and all beings are powerless
in His grasp. He alone creates, begins, gives existence, and originates.
He creates all beings and their acts, ordains their sustenance and terms.
Nothing possible is out of His grasp, the disposal of no matter is beyond
His power. The number of things He can do is limitless, the amount He
knows is infinite.
His Knowledge
He knows all things knowable, encompassing all that takes place from
the depths of the earth to the highest heaven. He knows without an atom's
weight in the earth or heavens escaping His knowledge. He knows the
creeping of a black ant across a great stone on a lightless night, and
the motion in the air of a particle of dust on a windy day. He knows
the concealed and the yet more hidden, the buried recesses of hearts,
the movement of thought, and the opacities of the inmost soul; with
preeternal, beginningless knowledge that He has always possessed from
the limitless reaches of past eternity, not with awareness originating
within Him through being imparted or conveyed.
His Will
He Most High wills all that exists and directs all events. Nothing occurs
in the physical or spiritual world, be it meager or much, little or
great, good or evil, of benefit or detriment, faith or unbelief, knowledge
or ignorance, triumph or ruin, increase or decrease, obedience or sin;
save through His ordinance, apportionment, wisdom, and decision. What
He wills is, and what He does not will is not. Neither sidelong glance
nor passing thought is beyond His design. He originates all and returns
it, does what He wills, and none can repulse His command. There is no
rescinding His destiny, no flight for a servant from disobeying Him
except through divinely given success therein and mercy, and no strength
to obey Him save through His choice and decree. If all mankind, jinn,
angels, and devils combined their efforts to move or to still a single
particle of the universe without His will and choice, they would be
unable to. His will, like His other attributes, exists in His entity
and He ever possesses it. He has willed from preeternity the existence
of all things at the times He has chosen. They occur at the times which
He has destined from beginingless eternity, occurring neither before
nor after, but taking place in accordance with His knowledge and will,
without substitution or alteration. He directs events without successive
thoughts or waiting for time to elapse, which is why nothing diverts
Him from anything else.
His Hearing and Sight
He Most High is all-hearing and all-seeing. He hears and sees, no sound
however slight eluding His hearing, and no sight however minute escaping
His vision. Distance does not obscure His hearing nor darkness hinder
His vision. He sees without pupil or eyelids, and hears without ear
canal or ears, just as He knows without a heart, seizes without limb,
and creates without implement. His attributes no more resemble the attributes
of His creatures than His entity resembles the entity of His creatures.
His Speech
He Most High speaks, commands, forbids, promises, and warns with beginninglessly
eternal speech that is an attribute of His entity, not resembling the
speech of creatures in being a sound generated by the passage of air
or impact of bodies nor in letters articulated by compressing the lips
or moving the tongue. The Koran, Torah, Evangel, and Psalms are His
Books, revealed to His messengers (upon whom be peace). The Koran is
recited with tongues, written in books, and memorized in hearts despite
being beginninglessly eternal, an attribute of the entity of Allah Most
High, unsubject to disseverance and separation by conveyance to hearts
or pages. Moses (Allah bless him and give him peace) heard the speech
of Allah without sound or letter, just as the righteous see the entity
of Allah Most High in the afterlife without substance or accident.
Since Allah possesses all of the above attributes, He is living, knowing,
omnipotent, willing, hearing, seeing, and speaking by virtue of His
life, power, knowledge, will, hearing, sight, and speech, not merely
by virtue of His entity.
His Acts
Everything besides Him Glorious and Exalted exists through His action,
proceeding from His justice in the best, fullest, most perfect and equitable
way. He is wise in His acts and just in His decrees. His justice is
not comparable to the justice of His servants, since injustice may only
be imagined from a servant through his disposal of what belongs to another,
while this is inconceivable from Allah Most High, since nothing belongs
to anyone besides Him that He should unjustly dispose of it.
Everything besides Him, be it human, jinn, angel, devil, heaven, earth,
animal, vegetable, mineral, substance, accident, intelligible, or sensory,
is contingent, and was brought into existence through His power after
not being, created by Him after it was nothing. He alone existed in
preeternity, and nothing else. He then originated creation, that His
omnipotence might be manifest, His prior decree effected and His eternal
word realized; not from needing or requiring anything in creation. Our
origination, beginning, and responsibility are of Allah's generosity,
not because of their being obligatory for Him, and His blessings and
benefaction exist because of His favor, not because of being due from
Him. Everything that exists is indebted to Him for His generosity and
goodness, His blessings and benevolence; for He is well able to pour
all manner of torments upon His servants and try them with every variety
of suffering and illness, and were He to do so, it would be just on
His part and not wicked or unfair. He Mighty and Majestic rewards His
servants, the believers, for their acts of obedience because of His
generosity and in fulfillment of His word, not because of their deserving
it or His owing it to them. He is not obliged to anyone to do anything,
nor is injustice on His part conceivable, for He does not owe any rights
to anyone. The obligation of men and jinn to perform acts of obedience
is established by His having informed them of it upon the tongues of
the prophets (upon whom be peace), and not by unaided human reason.
He sent the prophets and manifested the truth of their messages by unmistakable,
inimitable miracles. They have communicated His commands, prohibitions,
promises, and warnings, and it is obligatory for mankind and jinn to
believe in what they have conveyed.
view from the site of Imam al-Ghazali's retreat
go to the Golden Gate