An intimation on His knowledge of particulars

would be knowing of the lion whose image is drawn upon it. (And thirdly) these forms are something supervening upon the essence, that is, additional to it; so they are either eternal in their essence — which is impossible, since the multiplicity of the Necessary of Existence (wājib al-wujūd) is impossible — or originated from the essence, in which case it follows that the essence was not knowing prior in rank to those forms, so that ignorance was possible for Him in His own essence and impossible only through something other than Himself. And again, it follows that originated things without end subsist in His essence, exalted be He. And again, these forms are of diverse kinds, with a system and an order that are taken into account, and this calls for the knowledge of their maker; so it follows that He was knowing of them before them — which is absurd. Moreover, if He was knowing of them beforehand, then it is either by forms of those forms, and we transfer the argument, and so on, which is plainly false; or by His knowledge of His own essence, which is identical with His essence, since knowledge of the cause calls for knowledge of the effect — and in that case let His knowledge of universals (kulliyyāt) be of that kind too. And if you hold that His knowledge is something else besides those forms, then if it is other than His essence we speak of it as we did of the first; and if it is His knowledge of His own essence, then there is no sense in speaking of the impression of forms (irtisām al-ṣuwar) in His essence — holy is He, beyond that.

An Influx (wāridah), on His knowledge of particulars (juzʼiyyāt)

Since the establishing of the truth depends upon the negation of what is other than it, we wished to report what has reached us of the doctrines on this question. So we say: much has been transmitted from al-Shaykh al-Ashʻarī, may God be pleased with him, on this; and yet the transmission of the transmitters has not been settled (1) upon anything that can be relied upon in the matter. Rather, whenever they transmit a report they multiply talk and counter-talk about it, and they differ over the understanding of its meaning. We take up what is well known of his doctrine, namely that He knows particulars. So we say: if he means that He knows them under the description of particularity, then that can only be after their existence in the external world, since a thing, so long as it does not exist externally, is not individuated; and intelligible forms, though they be qualified by a thousand qualifications, do not preclude being truly predicated of many, and so are universal. Now if His knowledge of that sort is pre-eternal, then (first) it follows that all originated particulars are existent in pre-eternity, which is void; (and secondly) the mere presence of one thing to another does not suffice for its being knowing, so something of the known must supervene upon the knower for him to apprehend it, and that supervening thing is the form — and then that form would be impressed in His essence, which entails that His essence has length and breadth, so as to be a locus for the forms of material things, which are such. And if His knowledge is not pre-eternal, but comes after the existence of the originated thing, then (first) His ignorance of it before its existence follows; (and secondly) the absence of His will in creating it follows, for want of knowledge, since the will is among the consequents of knowledge and does not exist where knowledge does not; (and thirdly) what was said above about His essence having length, and so on. And all of that is impossible.

And if he means that He knows them not under the description of particularity, but rather knows that at such a time, upon such an event, such an essence with such an attribute exists — then these conceptions can only come about by the impression of forms in His essence. And if they are originated with temporal origination, then it follows that He was not knowing before them, and that an originated thing supervenes upon His essence, both of which are impossible. (And again) they are created by Him and preceded by knowledge, and that would be by other forms, so we transfer the argument to those, and an infinite regress (tasalsul) follows. And if they are eternal in time, then if they are also eternal in their essence, necessary existents without end follow; and if they are originated in their essence, depending upon Him for existence, then the eternity of originated things without end, other than the Essence and the Attribute, follows — and that is contrary to his own doctrine. (And again) their creation requires the will, which depends upon knowledge, so He would be knowing of those forms too before creating them, and that would be by other forms, and we transfer the argument to those, and an infinite regress follows. And if he passes over all of this and says that His knowledge is not by impression, then he has affirmed an essential knowledge identical with His essence, which is His knowledge of His own essence — and he himself has demonstrated its falsity. And God knows best. (1)

The imitators of the philosophers have said that He knows particulars in a universal manner — that is, in the manner already set out in the second branch of the disjunction concerning al-Ashʻarī's statement. And they likened it to the astronomer's knowledge that in such a year, at such an hour, at such a degree, an eclipse occurs: it occurs only as a particular, even if in his conceiving it is universal, since a thing, so long as it does not exist externally, is not individuated, even if it be qualified by qualifications without end. And against this doctrine there follows what followed against the second limb of the disjunction of al-Ashʻarī's statement, since they too hold that it is by the impression of forms.

The Sufis (ṣūfiyyah) hold that all the particulars of the contingents are present to Him in pre-eternity, existing with their external existence. They say that time is one of the modes of the Real (al-Ḥaqq), and that all the beings that fall under the rule of time exist within that time in the manner of points marked upon a straight line; and since the Real manifested Himself through this single mode, He manifested Himself through everything in it, so that the whole is existent with Him, present to Him, disclosed to Him. And they adduced as evidence for this that, just as the relation of all places to Him stands on a par, so too the relation of times to Him stands on a par: with Him there is no present, no past and no future. It is only we who do not apprehend what is to come or what has passed with the apprehension of the present, because of the narrowness of our vision — like an ant walking along a thread dyed in different colours, which does not apprehend one colour until it has passed beyond the colour before it, because its sense is too narrow to take in all the colours at once, and so it supposes that this has come to be and that has passed away, while we see it all at once. And so it is with us.

And this is the doctrine onto which the author of al-Muḥākamāt forced the philosophers' doctrine in their statement that He knows them in a universal manner. He said: that is, He does not know them as non-existent and then as existent, as white and then as black, and so on, with renewal in His knowledge; rather He knows them in their change all at once. And he gave this same likeness and adduced this same evidence. And it is as though it were a statement whose contrary is precisely what plain reason decrees, since every rational man judges that the coming day is non-existent now and existent afterwards, together with everything that occurs in it, at the two poles of existence and non-existence. Nor does this fall below the rank of sophistry (safsaṭah) — quite apart from the fact that it does not escape affirming impression, while the likeness and the evidence adduced stand at a great distance from that for which they are adduced and likened. Let us return, then, to the establishing of the truth, and so we say:

You know that, since there is no existence save for His essence, His reality is the reality of realities and His essence the essence of essences, and everything you imagine is but one of the considerations of that essence. You must therefore say that His knowledge is identical with His essence, and that it is identical with His knowledge of His essence, and that it is knowledge of all His modes and phases; and that everything honoured with emergence is but the self-disclosure (tajallī) of what is in that knowledge — save that, because the vessel of the external world is too narrow to hold the ranks without end which that knowledge requires according to what belongs to each thing in its own essence, the ordering in the self-disclosures came about. So just as His essence is one in itself, multiplicity having occurred only in the world of the self-disclosures, so too His knowledge of the whole is one in itself, its multiplicity being in the world of the self-disclosures. Nothing has emerged into existence but what lay latent in that essential knowledge, and nothing has been set out in detail but what was contained in it in summary. He, then, is the Knowing

— Notes —

[9] «1» Perhaps the word is istaqarra.

[10] «1» All these theories and their like are built upon likening the knowledge of the Creator to the knowledge of created man, and they all collapse when we say that we do not apprehend the true nature of His knowledge, but rather affirm decisively that it does not resemble our knowledge, just as resemblance between Him and His creation is precluded in the Essence and in all the other attributes. Written by Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā.