The Attributes of Action in Ashʿarism
The fact that everything that has happened in the universe is created by God shows that there is a relationship between God and the universe. Since God’s influence on the universe is possible through God’s actions, in the history of kalam, this relationship has been expressed more in terms of God’s attributes of action. This book aims to reveal the Ashʻarī mazhab’s understanding of God’s attributes of action. In this book, firstly, concepts such as “name (ism), named (musammā), naming (tasmiyah), attribute (sifat) and described (mawsuf)” are first explained, and the understanding of divine the attributes is discussed based on the views of the Kalām secs on these concepts. This included the concept of the divine essence, its attributes and the relationship of these attributes to God’s actions. Finally, the act of creation which plays an important role in explaining the relationship between God and the universe, and other issues related to this act were examined.
Since the works of the early Ash‘arī scholars works do not provide sufficient elaboration on the act of creation, their perspectives on this matter were primarily traced through Māturīdī sources. The analysis of the available texts shows that the act of creation, referred to as takwīn by the Māturīdīs, was more extensively discussed by later Ash‘arī theologians, especially after al-Ghazālī, and was predominantly interpreted within the framework of the attribute of divine power (qudrah). Another key finding of this study is that, within Ash‘arī theological thought, the divine governance of the universe is explained in terms of attributes of knowledge (ʿilm), will (irādah) and power (qudrah). However, the act of divine creation – i.e. the actualisation of entities into existence – is considered possible only through the temporal attachment (ḥādith ta‘alluq) of qudrah. In this context, for a clearer explanation of the relationship between Allah and the universe, the study proposes a dual classification of divine creation into “the process of creation” and “the result of creation”, which constitutes one of the original contributions of this work.
Keywords: Kalām; Ash‘ariyya; Attribute; Attribute of Action; Creation