photo of ramadan light on top of table

Notes on various Conceptions of God

Notes from this:

Introduction

  • Here, however, we will consider and compare the Pantheistic God, the Theistic God and finally, the Unity of Being of Eckhart and Ibn Arabi (MW: the last of which is what I find most compelling and motivated the writing of these notes.)

The Theistic God (i.e. the God of Priests)

  • What can we say about the theistic God? To start with:
    • Omnipotence: He dominates our universe and is capable of influencing it either naturally or miraculously
    • Omnipresence: He is immanent in Creation
    • Transcendent: He transcends Creation, i.e. He ontologically precedes Creation (MW: One of the aims of Surah Ikhlas is to stress this.)
    • Good: He is the fount of moral truth and direction
    • Personal: He is deeply concerned with human moral activity
  • God’s Personality is the most defining characteristic of God as conceived theistically, and what distinguishes Him from more abstract, detached, ethically neutral conceptions.
  • As conceived in this way, ofcourse, we confront a whole host of difficult theological questions to reconcile:
    • What did God do ‘before’ Creation?
    • Why did God create this world? (Related: why does evil exist in our world?)
    • How can an Immutable Being create, and more importantly, why would an Immutable Being care for our prayer and action?

And so on…

The Pantheistic God (i.e. the God of Philosophers)

  • Speaking simply, pantheism identifies Creation with God.
    i.e. they do not distinguish Creation from Creator. God is all that is, and all that is is God. 
    Taken charitably, this view can be thought of as: God is the sum of His Attributes.

(MW: Ofcourse, it is an attractive and popular philosophy amongst mystics and thinkers, notably types who mistake awe for the Cosmos with awe for God Herself, I think.)

  • To distinguish it from the above, the pantheistic God is one that disposes of God’s transcendence and personality.
  • A natural claim to then make is to doubt God’s consciousness (MW: hard to assess this claim in light of our tenuous grasp of consciousness as a subject)
  • Further, it’s hard here to connect God’s Existence with Ethics; He has no attributes as such, is not inherently deserving of our love, and devotion.
  • From Ibn Arabi: “Because of piety (taqwa), we are given Divine intuition, and God through theophany undertakes to teach us, through intuition and belief and not thought. I mean the things that are introduced in the sacred texts through transmitted evidence but which reason regards to be impossible. Thus, the believer’s reason goes on to interpret them, and the pure believer accepts them… [mystic, however, intuits them]. Then the people of unveiling see God’s right hand, His hand, both of His hands, God’s eye, God’s eyes which have been attributed [in the sacred texts] to Him. They see His step and His face as well. They see attributes such as God’s delight, His surprise, and His transformation from one form to another… all and all. Thus, the God worshipped by the believers and the people of intuition is not the same as the God which is worshipped (MW: or not worshipped) by the people of thinking.”

Where do Eckhart and Ibn Arabi stand relative to pantheism?

  • To begin with, both Eckhart and Ibn Arabi discuss a God that is fundamentally hidden, one who veils and clothes Himself in Reality.
    There is a difference between people who assert existence they cannot immediately see from those who assert that all that exists is what they immediately see.
  • Furthermore, Ibn Arabi+Eckhart’s conception of God is that He is unconditional on Existence. There is a causal link from God to Creation but not the other way round.
  • That said, there are plenty of phrases in their work which is indicative of pantheism. For example, they regard God as a single essence (dhat) from which objects in Creation partake.
    From the Fusus al Hikam:
    “Verily, God is All-Subtle. It is because of His Subtlety and Mercy, that in everything in the real world, He is the same as that object… Though concerning the beings of the world it is said that this is the sky, this is the earth, this is rock, tree, animal, angel, sustenance or food; in every object there is the same essence. As Ash‘aris say, the entire world is one concreted substance. That it is a single substance. This is the same as what we say that [in all objects], the essence is the same. Ash‘aris also said that the substance comes into difference (MW: i.e. objects are different from each other) because of accidents. This is also the same as what we say that the essence comes into difference and plurality because of forms and relations so that making a distinction may be possible. Thus, it can be said that this object differs in terms of form or accident or temperament — or whatever other name you like — and it is the same in terms of existence”.
  • The difference between Ibn Arabi+Eckhart’s theology and pantheism can be further characterised as follows:

(MW: these sort of map to Ibn Arabi’s hadarah, where 1 = the Absolute, 2 = God as agent + God as names and attributes, 3 = the forms + ideas + essence that permeates reality (i.e. the idea of a chair rather than the chair, again: think archetypes or Platonic forms), 4 = physical, material objects)

The Panentheistic God

  • “pan” = all, “en” = in, “theo” = God, “ism” = belief. i.e. the belief that all things are in God.
  • To summarise, panentheism attempts to find middle-ground by accepting God’s Transcendence but not His Personality.

i.e. All things are in God, but God is not all things, He is more.

  • This is a more sympathetic, but not complete view.
    From Ibn Arabi: “No one of the beings of the world and no object is outside God. But, every quality which is manifest in the world, has an essence in the presentation of the Truth”
    From Eckhart: “He created all things in such a way that they are not outside himself, as ignorant people falsely imagine. Everything that God creates or does he does or creates in himself, sees or knows in himself, loves in himself.”

Some interesting notes on Ibn Arabi and Eckhart

  • The mystical experience is the process by which we unify ourselves with the essence of the Divine as immanent in the world, leaving out the aspect of God’s essence that is transcendent.
    (MW: I like this; it helps clarify the nature of what it means to be ‘in union’ with or to ‘lose oneself’ in God. cf fanaa)
  • First, an interesting point: it appears by going through scripture + tradition that Islam places more stress on God’s Transcendence, whereas Christianity places more stress on God’s Personality.
    (MW: the latter is clear from Christians interpreting Christ Himself as Godly, i.e. this is anthropomorphic and interventionist as it gets.
    Another interesting note is the extent to which Christians start their prayers with ‘Our Father’, and Muslims start theirs with ‘Our Lord’. The former emphasises kinship and proximity, the latter emphasis glory and remoteness)
  • What makes Eckhart and Ibn Arabi so interesting within the context of their traditions is that Eckhart and Ibn Arabi go in opposite directions to their intellectual inheritance.
    i.e. Eckhart starts within a tradition that stresses Personality, and begins to assert God’s Transcendence. Ibn Arabi starts within one that stresses Transcendence, and instead stresses God’s Personality.
  • Ibn Arabi notes 3 kinds of remembrance (dhikr) of God in order of increasing transcendence:
    • ‘He’ (huwa)
    • ‘Thou’ (anta)
    • ‘I’ (ana)
  • Ibn Arabi is concerned mostly with representing God as ‘He’ or ‘Thou’ and Eckhart predominantly with God as ‘I’ (cf fanaa or the station of annihilation)
    (MW: I confess I don’t really understand this last point; but apparently there is more detail in the Futuhat al Makkiya Volume 2.)
  • (MW: separately, it appears to me that a lot of religious confusion is caused by either not attempting to resolve or accept the contradictions inherent in God being both fundamentally transcendent and immanent.
    Taking his immanence too far, one gets pantheism or polytheism. Taking his transcendence too far, you get the remote Reality of Buddhism or Taoism. In fact, if paradoxes themselves are symbols interpretable as the delimitations or veils within which God both reveals and conceals His Nature, then their resolution, acceptance and interpretation is the means by which we come to know God. i.e. this is a broader symbol for dipoles coming together in God. We have to be very careful here: it is not correct to say that we seek “an appropriate level” of transcendence. It is better to say instead that both are true. That God isboth immanent and transcendent. Seen this way, pagan polytheism and buddhist monism are not incorrect by virtue of thescale of the attributes they interpret God as having, but rather simply wrong by virtue of being incomplete. They accept one trait and neglect the other. Our task is to accept both. This is hard, but nobody said enlightenment was easy.)
  • Ibn Arabi on the issues with God as only transcendent: “If there was no trace of religion which has brought Divine news, no one would know God; and if we contented with the intellectual evidence which rationalists think that lead one to Godhead, and if we stopped in stating that He is not such and such, then no creature would love God. When divine news came down through the language of religion, suggesting that God is so and so — news that are inconsistent with the appearance of rational evidence — we love God because of these affirmative attributes. … God has not introduced himself but only through the news about Himself, such as He is kind toward us, His mercy applies on us, He has kindness, mercy and love, and He comes down in limitations and conditions… [this is because] we simile Him and imagine Him in our heart, in our Qibla, and in our imagination as if we see Him. Nay, but we see Him in ourselves, for we know Him through His own definition and not through our thought and idea.”
  • He claims that the people of Noah did not heed his call since his was one of a purely transcendent God.
    i.e. Noah described God incompletely. His message was discriminatory (i.e. furqani)

This highlights Muhammad’s completeness, for he combined God’s remoteness with personal analogy and allegory in his message.
i.e. Muhammad’s message was combinative (i.e. qur’ani)