Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/275

 furnished by religious tradition than by the speculations of philosophers. God created all things from nothing; the attempt to explain the presence of imperfection and evil in the world by the theory of the eternity of matter, or by the operation of laws of nature is futile; those laws themselves must refer back to God. The difficulty arising from the mingling of evil with good in creation is admitted; the real solution is unknown, but it must be maintained that creation was the work of God in spite of the difficulties which this presents.

As to the nature and attributes of God, the distinction which Sa'id al-Fayyumi tried to make between the essential and other attributes is untenable. The attributes stated in the Old Testament may be applied to God because they are revealed, which is exactly the same teaching as that of al-Ash'ari and al-Ghazali. These attributes are either referring to active qualities, or to relative, or to negative. Those which are active and those which are relative are used metaphorically; we do not know their real significance.

The fifth essay is more especially directed against the philosophers as teaching doctrines subversive of revelation. In the first place he disapproves the theory of emanations; the work of creation was directly performed by God without any intermediary; if there were emanations, why did they stop short at the lunar sphere? This refers to the descriptions given by the Arabic writers who endeavour to explain