Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy

Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy
Author: Herbert A. Davidson
Publisher: Oneworld Academic
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2021-11-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780861542406

This exhaustive study of medieval Islamic and Jewish proofs for eternity, creation, and the existence of God classifies the proofs systematically, analyses and explains them, and traces their sources in Greek philosophy. Davidson pursues the penetration of some of these Islamic and Jewish arguments into medieval Christian philosophy and, in a few instances, all the way into seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European philosophy. He attempts to treat every medieval Arabic and Hebrew proof for eternity, creation, and the existence of God which has philosophical character, disregarding only those that rest entirely on religious faith or fall below a minimum level of plausibility. Unique in both its classification of the proofs and its comprehensiveness, this will serve historians of philosophy, historians of ideas, and medievalists.

Proofs for Eternity, Creation, and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy

Proofs for Eternity, Creation, and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy
Author: Herbert Alan Davidson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 456
Release: 1987
Genre: History
ISBN:

The central debate of natural theology among medieval Muslims and Jews concerned whether or not the world was eternal. Opinions divided sharply on this issue because the outcome bore directly on God's relationship with the world: eternity implies a deity bereft of will, while a world with a beginning leads to the contrasting picture of a deity possessed of will. In this exhaustive study of medieval Islamic and Jewish arguments for eternity, creation, and the existence of God, Herbert Davidson provides a systematic classification of the proofs, analyzes and explains them, and traces their sources in Greek philosophy. Throughout the study, Davidson tries to take into account every argument of a philosophical character, disregarding only those arguments that rest entirely on religious faith or which fall below a minimal level of plausibility.

Aquinas on Creation

Aquinas on Creation
Author: Saint Thomas (Aquinas)
Publisher: PIMS
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1997
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780888442857

The six articles that comprise Book 2, Distinction 1, Question 1 of Aquinas' Writings on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard represent his earliest and most succinct account of creation. These texts contain the essential Thomistic doctrines on the subject, and are here translated into English for the first time, along with an introduction and analysis. In Article One Aquinas argues, against Manichean dualism, that there is one ultimate cause of all created being; in so doing he gives three proofs for the existence of the Creator and the essential features of his answer to the problem of evil. Thomas establishes his definition of creation in Article Two, providing the needed distinctions between philosophical and theological senses of creation. Emanationism and the problem of whether there can be any intermediary causes in God's act of creation are the subject of Article Three. The next article demonstrates that although God is the cause of all created being, nevertheless creatures are true causes in nature. Article Five argues that it is from revelation alone that we know that the world had a temporal beginning, and that the philosophical arguments that purport to show either the necessity or impossibility of the temporal beginning are not persuasive. A detailed exposition of the meaning of the first sentence of the Bible, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," follows in Article Six.

Fakhr-al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Thomas Aquinas on the Question of the Eternity of the World

Fakhr-al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Thomas Aquinas on the Question of the Eternity of the World
Author: Muammer Iskenderoglu
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2022-06-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004453423

This volume examines the approaches of Fakhr-al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1209) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) to the question of the eternity of the world, which was one of the most heated issues of debate between theologians and philosophers in the Middle Ages. The first chapter of the book gives some background to the discussion from Greek philosophy, early Judaeo-Christian and Muslim traditions. The second and the third chapters discuss the approaches of Rāzī and Aquinas respectively to the question of the eternity of the world. The last chapter compares their approaches, brings out some similarities of their approaches between them as well as in relation to their own traditions, Islam and Christianity respectively. The book tries to show that though they were theologians, both Rāzī and Aquinas were more in line with the philosophers than their fellow theologians.

Medieval Jewish Philosophy

Medieval Jewish Philosophy
Author: Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2014-03-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136788336

Beginning with the earliest philosopher of the Middle Ages, Saadiah ben Joseph al-Fayyumi, this work surveys the writings of such figures as Solomon ben Joseph ibn Gabirol, Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda, Abraham ben david Halevi ibn Daud, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, Gersonides, Hasdai Crescas, Simon ben Zemah Duran, Joseph Albo, Isaac Arama, and Isaac Abrabanel. Throughout an attempt is made to place these thinkers in an historical context and describe their contributions to the history of Jewish medieval thought in simple and lucid terms. The book is directed to students enrolled in Jewish studies courses as well as to those who seek an awareness and appreciation of the riches of medieval Jewish philosophical tradition.

Averroes and Averroism in Medieval Jewish Thought

Averroes and Averroism in Medieval Jewish Thought
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2023-12-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004685685

The Andalusian Muslim philosopher Averroes (1126–1198) is known for his authoritative commentaries on Aristotle and for his challenging ideas about the relationship between philosophy and religion, and the place of religion in society. Among Jewish authors, he found many admirers and just as many harsh critics. This volume brings together, for the first time, essays investigating Averroes’s complex reception, in different philosophical topics and among several Jewish authors, with special attention to its relation to the reception of Maimonides.

Philosophy and the Abrahamic Religions

Philosophy and the Abrahamic Religions
Author: Rahim Acar
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2013-01-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1443845582

From Greco-Roman Antiquity through to the European Enlightenment, philosophy and religious thought were inseparably interwoven. This was equally the case for the popular natural or ‘pagan’ religions of the ancient world as it was for the three pre-eminent ‘religions of the book’, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The lengthy and involved encounter of the Greek philosophical tradition – and especially of the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic strands of that tradition – initially with the Hellenistic cults and subsequently with the three Abrahamic religions, played a critical role in shaping the basic contours of Western intellectual history from Plato to Philo of Alexandria, Plotinus, Porphyry, Augustine, and Proclus; from Aristotle to al-Fārābī, Avicenna, al-Ġazālī, Aquinas and the medieval scholastics, and eventually to Meister Eckhart and Nicholas Cusanus and such modern philosophers and theologians as Richard Hooker, the Cambridge Platonists, Jacob Boehme, and G. W. F. Hegel to name but a few. The aim of the twenty-four essays comprising this volume is to explore the intellectual worlds of the three Abrahamic religious traditions, their respective approaches to scriptural hermeneutics, and their interaction over many centuries on the common ground of the inheritance of classical Greek philosophy. The shared goal of the contributors is to demonstrate the extent to which the three Abrahamic religions have created similar shared patterns of thought in dealing with crucial religious concepts such as the divine, creation, providence, laws both natural and revealed, such problems as the origin of evil and the possibility of salvation, as well as defining hermeneutics, that is to say the manner of interpreting their sacred writings.

Islam, Causality, and Freedom

Islam, Causality, and Freedom
Author: Özgür Koca
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108853730

In this volume, Ozgur Koca offers a comprehensive survey of Islamic accounts of causality and freedom from the medieval to the modern era, as well as contemporary relevance. His book is an invitation for Muslims and non-Muslims to explore a rich, but largely forgotten, aspect of Islamic intellectual history. Here, he examines how key Muslim thinkers, such as Ibn Sina, Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Arabi, Suhrawardi, Jurjani, Mulla Sadra and Nursi, among others, conceptualized freedom in the created order as an extension of their perception of causality. Based on this examination, Koca identifies and explores some of the major currents in the debate on causality and freedom. He also discusses the possible implications of Muslim perspectives on causality for contemporary debates over religion and science.

Scientific Theology: Nature

Scientific Theology: Nature
Author: Alister E. McGrath
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2006-11-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567219623

New in paperback of the first volume of McGrath's groundbreaking three volume work of Systematic Theology, "A Scientific Theology". Written by one of world's best-known theologians, these volumes together represent the most extended and systematic exploration of the relation beween Christian theology and the natural sciences yet produced. Thoroughly ecumenical, this will be a significant work for Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and evangelical readers. The work is marked throughout by a sustained and critical engagment with the history and philosophy of the natural sciences, and a passionate commitment to the legitimacy of theology as an academic discipline. "Nature" sets out a vision for a "scientific theology", in which the working assumptions of the natural sciences are critically appropriated as a theological resource. It then moves on to deal at considerable length with the crucially important question of the status of nature, which ahs rearely been given the serious considertion that it deserves. Responding sympathetically to the growing consensus that "nature" is a socially mediated concept, McGrath sets out an approach to nature that establishes it as a theologically legitamate notion, and explores its positive and constructive role within a scientific theology.

Central Problems of Medieval Jewish Philosophy

Central Problems of Medieval Jewish Philosophy
Author: Dov Schwartz
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2006-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9047416848

This volume deals with central issues of medieval Jewish philosophy. Among the subjects treated are divine immanence, the intellect, miracles, and esoteric writing and its limits. This work provides a new perspective on the history of Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages.