Islam: Chapter Five: Kalām: The Statements of the Theologians: 2. Al-Māturīdī

This is a primary theological document from the Māturīdī school of Sunni Islamic Kalām (systematic theology), comprising a creedal statement derived from the teachings of Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 944 CE), head of the Ḥanafī school in Transoxania, as compiled by his students. The text is introduced with a historical account of the conflict between the rationalist Mu'tazila — who argued for the createdness of the Quran and human free will grounded in divine justice — and the Old Believers who rejected philosophical reasoning in theology, with al-Māturīdī representing a third path: defending traditionalist doctrine *with* rational argument rather than against it. The creed's numbered propositions work through standard Kalām topics — a cosmological proof for God's existence and unity, refutations of materialism and Zoroastrian dualism — but its most substantial engagement is with the Mu'tazilī positions on the Quran's eternity and on predestination, arguing that God wills and ordains sin without thereby commanding or taking pleasure in it, a distinction meant to preserve both divine omnipotence and human moral accountability. On the Quran, the school stakes out a position distinct from both the Mu'tazila (who said it was created) and the Ash'arīya (who said the written text is merely an *expression* of the Word), holding that the Word is eternal but the letters and sounds are created. Most distinctive is the closing passage on faith, which presents an intricate four-level hierarchy — Islam, faith, gnosis, and true worship (tawḥīd) — each located in progressively deeper recesses of the heart, read as an allegory of the Quranic "verse of light." Readers interested in the formation of Sunni orthodox theology, the reception of Greek philosophy in medieval Islam, or the theological logic behind Islamic predestinarianism will find this a dense but unusually explicit statement of the positions that became normative across much of the Muslim world.

Islam: Chapter Five: Kalām: The Statements of the Theologians: 2. Al-Māturīdī

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