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Part One · Chapter Seventy-One — Introduction to the Kalām: Method, History, and Maimonides' Critique
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Know that the many sciences that existed for the verification of these matters were lost through the passage of time and through the domination of ignorant nations over us, and because those matters were not permitted to be disclosed to all people as we explained — and what was permitted for all people were only the texts of Scripture.
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If jurisprudence — though a quarrel arose over committing it to a register made available to all people, for the corruption that would result from that — how much more so that nothing of these secrets of Torah should be written down and made available to people! Rather they were transmitted from individual specialists to individual specialists.
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As for that meager reflection you find in the kalam on the meaning of divine unity and what is connected with this topic in some of the Geonim and among the Karaites — these are things they took from the mutakallimūn of Islam; and it is very little compared to what Islam composed on this subject.
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Know that everything Islam said on these topics — both the Muʿtazilites and the Ashʿarites — consists of opinions built on premises; and those premises were taken from the books of the Greeks and Syrians who aimed at opposing the views of the philosophers and refuting their arguments — and upon this they occupied themselves.
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When Islam arose and the books of the philosophers were translated for them, the refutations that had been composed against the philosophers' books were also translated for them. They found the works of Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī and Ibn ʿAdī and others on these topics, and they seized upon them and obtained, in their view, a great prize.
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Without doubt there are things common to all three of us — I mean Jews, Christians, and Muslims — namely the doctrine of the creation of the world, by whose correctness miracles and other matters are validated. As for the other things the two communities specified — their involvement in these topics as the Islamists' involvement with trinitarianism and incarnation — those are matters particular to them.
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In sum: all the early mutakallimūn — from the Christianized Greeks and from the Muslims — do not first follow the apparent nature of existence in their premises; rather they deliberate about how existence ought to be so that it would supply a proof for the correctness of that opinion which they hold; and if existence is contrary to this, they deny existence and claim that this is something incomprehensible.
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When I studied the books of these mutakallimūn as much as was available to me, just as I also studied the books of the philosophers according to my capacity, I found the path of all the mutakallimūn to be one single path in type, even if their sub-varieties differ. The foundation of them all is: no account is to be taken of how existence actually is in such-and-such a matter; rather it must be thus-and-so, because such-and-such a doctrine requires it.
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When I contemplated this method, my soul recoiled from it with an extreme revulsion — and it was right to recoil, for everything that purports to be a demonstration of the createdness of the world is subject to doubts, and it is not a conclusive demonstration except in the view of one who does not know the difference between demonstration and dialectic.
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The maximum achievement of the judiciously investigating religious scholar, in my view, is to invalidate the philosophers' proofs of eternity — and how great this is if he can accomplish it! Every perspicacious, rigorously investigating thinker who does not deceive himself has known that the question of the world's eternity or createdness cannot be reached by demonstration.
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If this is how matters stand with this question, how could we take it as a premise upon which to build the existence of God? For then the existence of God would be in doubt: if the world is created then there is a God; and if it is eternal then there is no God.
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The path I hold — and it is the demonstrative path that is beyond doubt — is to establish the existence of God, His unity, and the negation of corporeality by the methods of the philosophers, whose methods are built on the eternity of the world: not because I believe in the eternity of the world or concede that to them, but because by that method the demonstration is firm and becomes clear without doubt.
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If you are among those satisfied by what the mutakallimūn said and you believe that demonstration of the world's createdness has been established — that is excellent! And if it is not demonstrated in your view but you accept its createdness from the prophets by way of tradition — there is no harm in that.
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As for my method — let me describe its outline to you now. I say: the world is either eternal or created; if it is created, then necessarily it has a creator — and this is a first principle of reason: that what comes into existence does not bring itself into existence, but its creator is something other than itself. Thus the creator of the world is God.
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I shall devote to you in this treatise a chapter when I speak about the createdness of the world in which I shall explain to you a certain proof of the world's createdness, and I shall reach the goal that every mutakallim aimed at — without nullifying the nature of existence and without contradicting Aristotle in anything he demonstrated.
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I decided to set out for you the general premises of the mutakallimūn by which they establish the world's createdness, God's existence, His unity, and the negation of corporeality; and to show you their method for this, and to clarify for you what follows from each individual premise; and after that to set out for you the premises of the philosophers.
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Do not require of me in this treatise the verification of those philosophical premises I shall summarize for you, for that belongs to natural science and metaphysics — the greater part of them.
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I have already told you that there exists nothing besides God, exalted be He, and this existing world; and the only demonstration concerning Him, exalted be He, is from this existent — from its totality and from its particulars. It therefore necessarily follows that this existent must be considered as it actually is, and the premises must be derived from what is observed of the nature of the existent.