Christ’s Incarnation & the Quran’s Inlibration

The following lengthy excerpt is taken from Harry Austryn Wolfson’s monumental work titled Philosophy of Kalam, published by Harvard University Press in 1976, 244-263.

The work can be accessed here: Harry Austryn Wolfson The Philosophy Of The Kalam. 

Wolfson mentions the two main views held by those Muslims who believed in the uncreatedness of the Quran.

One group of Muslims (i.e., Ibn Hanbal, Ashari?) believed that the Quran is the uncreated speech of Allah and that it was then inscribed on the preserved tablet, which Allah created. They also believed that the recitation of the Quran is created, since it consists of letters, words that are part of created speech that creatures employ. This led these Muslims to affirm that the Quran consists of two natures.  

The other group (e.g., Ibn Kullam, Ashari?) denied that the Quran can be inlibrated, meaning inscribed upon anything created, such as the preserved tablet. They further denied that what the people recite, what is written down between two covers, is the actual, literal Quran.

One Muslim in particular, namely, Ibn Hazm, actually believed that the Quran is creator since he believed that Allah’s attributes are identical to his essence. He further postulated that the term Quran refers to five things, only one of which is uncreated.

One can see how similar these debates and differences regarding the nature of the Quran are to early Christian debates in respect to Christ being the human incarnation of the uncreated Logos and of his possessing two distinct, yet inseparable, natures.  

I now proceed to the quotes. All emphasis will be mine.

2. THE UNRAISED PROBLEM OF INLIBRATION

In the preceding section we have tried to explain how the history of the doctrine of the uncreatedness of the Koran falls into two stages. It started as mere belief in a pre-existent Koran conceived of as created. The belief in its uncreatedness arose later with the rise of the belief in real attributes co-eternal with God, when the Word of God, by which was meant the pre-existent Koran, was taken to be one of those real attributes co-eternal with God.

But here two questions arise in our mind.

The first question concerns the relation of the uncreated Word of God in the sense of the uncreated pre-existent Koran to the Preserved Tablet, and its equivalents, the Hidden Book and the Mother of the Book. In the Koran, quite clearly, the Preserved Tablet means that on which the Koran was written and preserved, the term “Tablet” thus being used in the same sense as that of the “Tablets” of the Ten Commandments, on which, according to the Koran (7:142), were written an admonition and explanation of everything,¹ so that when tradition takes the Preserved Tablet to mean that on. which the divine decrees were written, it may be assumed to reflect the influence of the Book of Jubilees (5:13-14).² But, according to a tradition handed down in the name of the Prophet, the Preserved Tablet, together with the “pen” and the “throne” and the “chair,” was created by God before the creation of the world;³ and, according to a statement by Baghdadi, this belief in the antemundane creation of “the tablet and the pen” was held by “the forebears of the Muslim community, as well as by the people of the Book, whether Jews, Christians, or Samaritans.”⁴ In the light of this, we should like to know how those who believed in an uncreated pre-existent Koran reconciled their belief with the Koranic statement that the pre-existent Koran, before its revelation, had its abode in the created Preserved Tablet.

The second question concerns the relation of the uncreated Word of God in the sense of a pre-existent Koran to the revealed Koran. In Christianty, the question of the relation of the uncreated Word of God in the sense of the pre-existent Christ to the born Christ gave rise to two main views. According to one view, the pre-existent Christ was incarnate in the born Christ, with the result that in the born Christ there were two natures, that of the pre-existent Christ, described as divine, and that of the born Christ, described as human. According to the other view, there was no incarnation or enfleshment of the kind that would result in two natures; the born Christ had only a human nature, though a nature superior to that of any other human being. The first view was held only by those who believed in the eternity of the pre-existent Christ; the second view included among its followers not only those who believed in the createdness of the pre-existent Christ but also some of those who believed in his eternity.⁵ Now it happens that in that fictitious disputation by John of Damascus the Muslim is made to ask, “How did God come down into the womb of a woman?”⁶ whereupon the Christian explains to him the orthodox doctrine of the incarnation, concluding with the words: “For know that Christ is said to be twofold in matters pertaining to natures, but one in hypostasis.”⁷ From this we gather that by the time the problem of the eternity of the Koran became a matter of sectarian controversy, those who participated in that controversy had already gained a knowledge of the orthodox Christian doctrines of the incarnation and the two natures and undoubtedly they must have by that time also heard that among the Christians there were those who denied both the uncreatedness of the pre-existent Christ and the two natures in the born Christ. Consequently, in view of the fact that the controversy in Islam over the problem of whether the pre-existent Koran was uncreated or created is analogous to the Christian controversy over the problem of whether the pre-existent Christ was uncreated or created, the question arises in our mind whether similarly, in analogy to the Christian controversy over the problem of the incarnation and the problem of two natures, there was not also in Islam a controversy over the problem of the inlibration, that is, the embookment, of the preexistent Koran in the revealed Koran and also over the problem of whether the revealed Koran had two natures, a divine and a man-made, or only one nature, a man-made nature.

Of these two questions, the first would seem to have been raised by those who believed in the uncreatedness of the Koran, probably moved to do so by the fact that the Mu'tazilites made use of the Koranic reference to “a glorious Koran on the Preserved Tablet” (85:21, 22) in their view of the createdness of the Koran. The answer to this question, as given by Ash‘ari, reads as follows: “If anybody says, ‘Tell us, do you believe that the Word of God is on the Preserved Tablet?’ the answer is: That is what we believe, because God has said, ‘Yet it is a glorious Koran on the Preserved Tablet’ and therefore the Koran is on the Preserved Tablet.”⁸ What this answer means is that the uncreated Word of God in the sense of the pre-existent Koran had prior to its revelation a twofold stage of existence: first, from eternity as an attribute in God; second, with the creation of the Preserved Tablet prior to the creation of the world, as a book on that Preserved Tablet. How the transition from the one stage to the other was effected we are not told. In Christianity, it is to be noted, a similar conception of a twofold stage of existence in the uncreated Word of God in the sense of the pre-existent Christ before the incarnation was held by the Apologists and Arius, where the transition from the first stage of existence to the second was effected, according to the Apologists, by an act of generation but, according to Arius, by an act of creation.⁹ Here, however, in the case of the uncreated Word of God in the sense of the pre-existent Koran, the transition could not be explained as having been effected either by an act of generation or by an act of creation.¹⁰ Its effectuation would have to be explained, I imagine, by some kind of act whereby the Word would not cease to be an uncreated attribute in God.

As for the second question, the question about inlibration, it was not to my knowledge raised directly. But many passages dealing with the Koran, both by those who believe in its uncreatedness and by those who deny its uncreatedness, contain statements which seem like answers in anticipation of such a question. We shall examine some such passages, beginning with those of two contemporaries who flourished during the first part of the ninth century, Ibn Kullab and Ibn Hanbal.

In order to keep up the analogy between the problem of “inlibration” here and the Christian problem of “incarnation,” I shall continue to translate the expression “the kalam of God” by “the Word of God” rather than by the more commonly used phrase “the Speech of God.”

a. Ibn Kullab and the Denial of Inlibration

Ibn Kullab’s view as reported by Ash‘ari falls into two parts, the first part dealing with the uncreated Word of God and the second with the post-revealed Koran.

In the first part, after stating that “the Word of God is an attribute which subsists in Him and that God and the Word are coeternal,” he goes on to describe the Word as follows: “The Word of God is not made up of letters (huruf), nor is it a voice. It is indivisible, it is impartible, it is indissectible, it is unalterable. It is one single thing (ma‘na) in God.”¹

In the second part, he deals with the post-revealed Koran in the following passages:

(1) “The impression (rasm) consists of various letters [and expressions] and it is the recital (kira’ah) of the Koran .. . The expressions (‘ibarat) used as substitutes for the Word of God contain variety and diversity, whereas the Word of God contains no variety and diversity, just as the liturgical glorification of God (dhikr) is expressed in various and diverse terms, whereas God the glorified is subject to no variation and diversification.”² (2) “The recital [which is the impression of the Word of God] is different from the thing recited which subsists in God [namely, the Word of God], even as the liturgical glorification of God is different from God. For just as He who is glorified is beginningless and ceaselessly existent, whereas the glorification is originated, so also, with regard to the thing recited [which subsists in God, namely, the Word of God] God is eternally speaking it, whereas the recital is originated and created and it is an acquisition (kasb) on the part of man.”² (3) “The Word of God is called Arabic only because the impression, which is the expression thereof and is the recital thereof, is in Arabic, and so it is called Arabic for a reason. Thus also is it called Hebrew for a reason, and that is because the impression, which is the expression thereof, is in Hebrew. Thus also is the Word of God called command for a reason, and it is called prohibition for a reason, and it is called narration for a reason. God was eternally speaking even before His Word came to be called command, and even before the existence of a reason for which His Word is called command, and the same holds true with regard to calling His Word prohibition and narration. I deny that God is eternally narrating or eternally prohibiting.”⁴ (4) “Abdallah b. Kullab was of the opinion that what we hear recited by reciters is an expression used as a substitute for the Word of God, though Moses did indeed hear God uttering His Word; and, as for the Prophet’s saying ‘[If any one of those who join gods with God ask an asylum of thee,] grant him an asylum, that he may hear the Word of God’ (9:6), it means ‘that he may understand (yafham) the Word of God,’ or it may mean, according to his opinion, ‘that he may hear the reciters recite it.”⁵

These passages touch upon two topics: (1) the origin of the letters and expressions in the Koran; (2) the problem of inlibration.

With regard to the origin of the letters and expressions in the Koran, we gather from the third passage quoted that the impression — which consists of letters and expressions — of the uncreated simple Word of God was created at the time at which the Word of God was Arabicized, but, since the Arabicization of the Word of God was quite evidently due to Muhammad’s recital of it, just as the Hebraicization of it is said by Ibn Kullab to have been due to Moses’ recital of it, it is to be inferred that it was Muhammad’s recital of the Word of God— which Word of God, according to the fourth passage quoted, must have been heard by him as the Word of God was heard by Moses — that created the impression of the Word of God. It is, therefore, also to be inferred that, just as it is the Arabicized Word of God as it was created by Muhammad that any subsequent reciter of the Koran recites, so it is also the impression of the Word of God as it was created by Muhammad that any subsequent reciter of the Koran recites. Accordingly, when in the second passage quoted the uncreated Word of God is described as “‘the thing recited” (al-makru’), in contrast to “the recital” (al-kira’ah), this description is to be taken to mean that it is the ultimate and remote object of the recital, its immediate and proximate object being the impression of the Word of God. As for his statement in the same passage quoted that “the recital is originated and created, and it is an acquisition (kasb) on the part of man,” it reflects a current theory, according to which all human acts are created by God but acquired by man.⁶

With regard to the problem of inlibration, Ibn Kullab’s denial of it is quite evident from his denial, in the fourth passage quoted, of the literalness of the Koranic statement “that he may hear the Word of God.” A denial of inlibration may perhaps be discerned also in the contrast between his description of attributes in general, in which he says only that they are neither God nor other than God,⁷ and his description here of the attribute of Word in the sense of the Koran, in which he says that “it is an error to say that it is God or a part of Him (ba‘duhu) or other than He.”⁸ This addition certainly calls for an explanation, and a plausible explanation could be found, I think, in taking the statement here that the Word of God is not a “part” of God to mean that it is not a “part” which is “separated” from God and is “transferred” from Him to something else — expressions which, as we shall see, were used by Ash‘arite followers of Ibn Kullab in stating their denial of inlibration.⁹

b. Ibn Hanbal and the Affirmation of Inlibration

In contrast to the view of Ibn Kullab is the view of Ibn Hanbal. We shall quote here three reports of his view. First, Ibn Hazm reports him as saying that “the Word of God is His eternal knowledge and hence it is uncreated.”¹

Second, in Shahrastani there is the following statement: "The early Muslims (al-salaf) and the Hanbalites said: Agreement has established that what is between the covers is the Word (kalam) of God, and what we read and hear and write is the very Word of God. It therefore follows that the [individual] words (kalimat) and letters (huruf) are the very Word of God. But inasmuch as agreement has established that the Word of God is uncreated, it follows that the [individual] words [and letters] are eternal and uncreated.”² 

Third, another statement in Shahrastani, following shortly after the one just quoted and ascribed to the same “Early Muslims,” reads as follows: “One is not to suppose that we assert the eternity of the letters and sounds which subsist in our tongues.”³ Though in this passage Shahrastani does not repeat the words “and the Hanbalites” used by him in the preceding passage, we may assume that the view expressed in it is shared also by the Hanbalites.

From these three passages, three characteristic features of Ibn Hanbal’s doctrine of the uncreated Koran may be gathered.

First, when in the first report quoted he says that “the Word of God is... eternal . . . and uncreated” and in the third report quoted he says by contrast that “one is not to suppose that we assert the eternity of the letters and sounds which subsist in our tongues,” he quite clearly means to distinguish, as does Ibn Kullab, between an uncreated preexistent Koran, which is the Word of God, and a created Koran which comes into existence whenever one recites it or hears it or memorizes it or writes it.

Second, in the light of this denial of the eternity of the Koran which comes into existence whenever one recites it or hears it or memorizes it or writes it, when in the second report quoted he says that “what is between the covers is the Word of God and what we hear and read and write is the very Word of God,” he means to say that in every created Koran produced by reciting or hearing or memorizing or writing is embooked the uncreated Word of God, so that every created Koran CONSISTS OF TWO NATURES, a created nature and an uncreated nature. This is a direct affirmation of inlibration, in opposition to Ibn Kullab’s denial of it.

Third, when therefore from his assertion of inlibration in the first part of the second report he infers in the second part of the same report that “the [individual] words and letters are the very Word of God” and are “eternal and uncreated,” he merely means to assert that the differentiation of words and letters is already to be found in the uncreated Word of God, so that there is an inlibration of an uncreated individual Word and Letter in every created individual word and letter. This is in direct opposition to Ibn Kullab who, as we have seen, maintains that the “uncreated Word” is “single” and “indivisible” and that all differentiations take place only in the recited Koran. It is for this reason that, in the first report quoted, Ibn Hanbal dwells only on the eternity and uncreatedness of the Word of God but makes no mention of its simplicity.

This conception of the doctrine of the uncreatedness of the Koran, which may be gathered from Ibn Hazm’s and Shahrastant’s reports of the teaching of the Hanbalites, is confirmed by statements made by Ibn Hanbal himself, first, at his trial before Caliph al-Mu'tasim;⁴ second, in a conversation with Ishak ibn Ibrahim;⁵ third, in his letter to ‘Obaidallah ibn Yahya.⁶

To begin with, like Ibn Kullab, he distinguishes between the uncreated Koran and a man-made Koran, for, in contrast to his insistence that “the Koran is uncreated” on the ground that “the Word (kalam) or Command (amr) of God” is uncreated,⁷ he admits that “the utterance of the Koran” (lafz al-Ku’ran) is created.⁸ The “utterance of the Koran” is the equivalent of Ibn Kullab’s “impression” or “expression.” It is the Koran produced by reciting or hearing or memorizing or writing it.

But then, unlike Ibn Kullab, who maintains that the uncreated Word of God is not embooked in the recited Koran, he maintains that the uncreated Word of God is embooked in the “utterance of the Koran.” Thus in the verse “If any one of those who join gods with God ask an asylum of thee, grant him an asylum, that he may hear the Word of God” (9:6), he takes the expression “that he may hear the Word of God” literally,⁹ in direct opposition to Ibn Kullab, who interprets it figuratively. ¹⁰

Thus, according to Ibn Hanbal, every recited Koran, and hence also every heard or memorized or written Koran, IS OF A TWOFOLD NATURE, A CREATED ONE AND AN UNCREATED ONE. But, though ONE OF THE NATURES of these forms of the Koran WAS CREATED, Ibn Hanbal refrained from applying to any such Koran the term “created.” As reported of him by Ibn Haldun, “his scrupulousness prevented the imam Ahmad [b. Hanbal] from applying the term ‘created’ to the Koran [in any of its forms], for [as far as authoritative doctrine was concerned] he had not heard from the ancient Muslims before his time [anything to the effect] that he [was to] say that the written copies of the Koran are eternally pre-existent, or that the recitation [of the Koran] which is done by [human] tongues was something eternally pre-existent.” ¹¹

We have thus shown how by the middle of the ninth century there were two distinct conceptions of the orthodox Muslim belief in the uncreatedness of the Koran, that of Ibn Kullab and that of Ibn Hanbal, one denying inlibration, the other affirming inlibration. We shall now try to show how subsequent orthodox believers in the uncreatedness of the Koran followed either Ibn Kullab or Ibn Hanbal on the question of inlibration.

c. The Hanbalite Ash‘ari

The outstanding representative of the Hanbalite conception of the uncreatedness of the Koran is Ash‘ari in his work Ibanah, This is attested to by Ash‘ari himself, who, in one of the early parts of this work, declares that in his exposition of the beliefs of Islam he is following Ibn Hanbal.¹

To begin with, like Ibn Hanbal, he does not consider the uncreated Word of God as simple. This may be gathered from the. fact that he uses the verse “Should the sea become ink, to write the words of my Lord, the sea would surely fail ere the words of My Lord would fail” (18:109) as proof of the uncreatedness of the “Word” of God,² thus indicating that the uncreated Word, to him, was composed of words.

Then, while rejecting the use of Ibn Hanbal’s expression “the utterance (lafz) of the Koran,”³ like Ibn Hanbal, he believes that the written or memorized or recited or heard Koran is created and that in it the uncreated Word of God is inlibrated. He thus says: “The Koran [used by him in the sense of the uncreated Word of God] is really written in our books, really preserved in our hearts, really read by our tongues, and really heard by us.’⁴ He thus also follows Ibn Hanbal’s interpretation of the verse about giving asylum to a polytheist (9:6) by taking the clause “that he may hear the Word of God” to mean literally that the very Word of God is heard when one hears the reading of the Koran.⁵ Again, like Ibn Hanbal, he does not allow the application of the term “created” to any recited or heard or memorized or written Koran, even though any such Koran is of a twofold nature, a created one and an uncreated one. He thus asserts that “it may not be said, ‘A part of the Koran is created,’ because the Koran in its completeness is uncreated.”⁶ 

d. The Kullabite Ash‘ari and Ash‘arites

While, speaking for himself in his Ibanah, Ash‘ari proved himself to be a Hanbalite on the problem of inlibration, there are reports both of him and of the Ash‘arites which show them to be Kullabites on that problem. Here are some of such reports. As reported by Ibn Hazm, the Ash‘arites held that “the Word of God is an attribute of essence, eternal, uncreated, and God has only a single Word.”¹

They are then also reported by him as saying: “Gabriel did not bring down the Word of God into the heart of Muhammad; he brought down to him only something else, and that is an expression (‘ibarah) used as a substitute for the Word of God. Of that which we read in copies of the Koran and is written therein nothing is the Word of God. The Word of God . . . does not separate itself (yuzayil) from the Creator, nor does it subsist in something else, nor does it abide in different places, nor is it transferred (yuntakal), nor does it consist of combined words.”³ 

From these passages we gather that the Ash‘arites agreed with Ibn Kullab both on the simplicity of the uncreated Word of God and on the denial of the inlibration of that uncreated simple Word of God in the recited or written revealed Koran, but that they disagreed with him on the origin of the “expressions.” According to Ibn Kullab, as the report on him quoted above from the Makalat³ would seem to indicate, the expressions are created by the recital of the revealed Koran; according to the Ash‘arites here, they came into existence in the heavenly Koran prior to its revelation. Whether this difference was their conscious departure from Ibn Kullab’s view or whether it is based on some other version of the Kullabite view is a matter calling for investigation.

A similar Kullabite view is ascribed by Shahrastani to both Ash‘ari himself and the Ash‘arites.

In his Nihayat, in contrast to “the Early Muslims and the Hanbalites,” whose views we have quoted above, he says of Ash‘ari that he “put forward something new (ahda‘)” by asserting “the origination of the letters’ and that “what we read is not the Word of God in reality but only metaphorically.”⁴ This view is quite evidently Kullabite, even though Shahrastani declares it to be an innovation by Ash‘ari.

In his Milal, under the general heading “The Word of God,” he quotes Ash‘ari as saying: “The Word of God is one and [despite its unity] it is command and prohibition, narration and inquiry, promise and threats; but [all these are aspects, and] these aspects refer only to various points of view from which His word may be considered and not to [a multiplicity of] number in the Word itself. The expressions (al-‘ibarat) and utterances (al-alfaz) which are sent down to the prophets by means of the tongue of the angel are indications (dalalat) of the eternal Word (al-kalam). The indication is created and originated; that which is indicated is beginningless and eternal. The distinction between the reading and that which is read and between the reciting and that which is recited is like the distinction between the liturgical glorification of God (al-dlikr) and God who is glorified (al-madhkir), where the glorification is originated, and He who is glorified is eternal.”⁵ Later he adds that, according to the Ash‘arites, “what is in our hands is not really the Word of God.”⁶

Thus Ash‘ari and the Ash‘arites of Shahrastani, like the Ash‘arites of Ibn Hazm, agree with Ibn Kullab on the simplicity of the uncreated Word of God and on the denial of inlibration but differ with him on the origin of the letters and expressions.

e. The Hanbalite Ibn Hazm

Another follower of the view of Ibn Hanbal is to be found in Ibn Hazm. Though his brief formal restatement of Ibn Hanbal’s view on the Koran simply reads that “the Word of God is His eternal knowledge and hence it is uncreated,”¹ his presentation of his own view touches upon the various other points in Ibn Hanbal’s view, as we have reconstructed it on the basis of other sources, among them Ash‘ari’s Ibanah.

His own view on the Koran is presented by Ibn Hazm in opposition to those called by him “the Ash‘arites,” that is, the Kullabite Ash‘arites, whose view we have discussed in the preceding section.

First, he comes out in opposition to their Kullabite view of the simplicity of the uncreated Word of God. Quoting the Ash‘arites as saying that “God has only a single Word”² or that the Word of God does not consist of “combined letters,”³ he brands it as “sheer unbelief, for which there is no possible defense.”⁴ Maintaining, therefore, as does Ibn Hanbal, that the Word of God contains within itself innumerable words,⁵ he supports himself by quoting the verse “Should the sea become ink, to write the words of my Lord, the sea would surely fail ere the words of my Lord would fail,”⁷ and the verse “If all the trees that are upon the earth were to become pens, and if God should after that swell the sea into seven seas [of ink], His words would not be exhausted,”⁶ in both of which verses the plural “words” is used. These are the same verses quoted by Ash‘ari in his Ibanah to prove directly that the Word of God is uncreated and, indirectly, as we have seen,⁸ also that the Word of God contains many words. Finally, like Ibn Hanbal, whom he himself has quoted as saying that “the Word of God is His eternal knowledge and hence uncreated,”⁹ he says of the Word of God that it is “His knowledge.”¹⁰ But inasmuch as Ibn Hazm, unlike Ibn Hanbal and all other Attributists, denies the reality of attributes,¹¹ it is to be assumed that, though like Ibn Hanbal he makes use of the same assertion that the Word of God is His knowledge, he does not mean by it the same thing. To Ibn Hanbal “word” and “knowledge” are real attributes in God; to Ibn Hazm, since they are not real attributes, they are identical with the essence of God, and as such they are to be interpreted as actions. This will explain why unlike those who, on account of their belief that the Word of God in the sense of the Koran is an attribute in God, deny that it is a creator,¹¹ IBN HAZAM DECLARES THAT IT IS A CREATOR.^11b 

Second, he comes out in opposition to the Kullabite view of the Ash‘arites on the question of inlibration. Quoting “a certain group of Ash‘arites” as saying that “Gabriel did not bring down the Word of God” but only. “the expression of the Word of God,” he first dismisses this view with the comment that “this is sheer unbelief, for which there is no possible defense.”¹² Then he proceeds to argue that “the Koran is the Word of God,” and that it is this Koran which is the Word of God that is “recited in the mosques and written in books and preserved as a memory in hearts,”¹³ for it is this Koran which is the Word of God that was brought down by Gabriel.¹⁴

Thus Ibn Hazm, like Ibn Hanbal, distinguished between a pre-existent uncreated Koran identified with the Word of God and a man-made Koran produced by reciting and writing and memorizing the Koran, and undoubtedly also by hearing it, but makes no mention of the Preserved Tablet. Like Ibn Hanbal, too, he believes in the inlibration of the Word of God in the man-made Koran.

Ibn Hazm then goes on to explain more fully the distinction between the uncreated Koran and the man-made or, as he calls it, the created Koran, and to reassert the principle of inlibration.

Both the expression “the Word of God” and the term “Koran,” he says, apply to the following five things: (1) the physical sound which is uttered and heard when one recites the Koran,¹⁵ that is, the so-called “utterance (lafz) of the Koran”; (2) the expounding of the practical duties prescribed in the Koran, such, for instance, as almsgiving (al-zakat), prayer (al-salat), and pilgrimage (al-hajj);¹⁶ (3) the written copy of the Koran;¹⁷ (4) the memorized Koran of one who knows it by heart;¹⁸ (5) the Word of God which is His knowledge.¹⁹ Of these five meanings of the term “Koran” as well as of the expression “the Word of God,” only the fifth meaning refers to something uncreated; the first four meanings refer to things “created,” that is, man-made, which are thus created or man-made Korans. Still, even these created or manmade Korans, he maintains, are to be described as the Word of God and not as mere “expressions” of the Word of God, as in the belief of those Ash‘arites who were quoted by himself as saying that “Gabriel did not bring down the Word of God” but only “the expression of the Word of God.” Evidently having in mind another statement by the same Ash‘arites, one quoted by Shahrastani but not by himself, namely, that “what we recite is the Word of God metaphorically not in truth,”²⁰ Ibn Hazm says, in opposition to it, that what we recite or hear or memorize or write is “the Word of God in truth,”²¹ inasmuch as it is inlibrated or embooked in every form of the man-made Koran. Evidently, again, having in mind still another statement of the same Ash‘arites, which was quoted by himself, namely, that “of that which we read in the copies of the Koran and is written therein nothing is the Word of God,”²² he says, again, in opposition to it, that “the utterance that is heard is the Koran itself and the Word of God itself.”²³ In support of this assertion he quotes the verse on giving asylum to the worshipper of many gods (9:6), in which, like Ibn Hanbal and unlike Ibn Kullab,²⁴ he takes the expression “that he may hear the Word of God” to mean literally that he may really hear the Word of God.²⁵ 

Then a question would seem to have arisen in the mind of Ibn Hazm. In view of the fact that the term “Koran” applies to five things, of which only one is uncreated but four are created, one would like to know, he would seem to have asked himself, whether, depending on the sense in which one uses the term “Koran,” one could not say of the Koran either that it is uncreated or that it is created or that it is both uncreated and created. Already Ibn Hanbal, as we are told by Ibn Haldun, anticipated such a question, for, having in mind his own admission that “the utterance of the Koran” is created,²⁶ he “scrupulously refrained from applying the term created to the Koran,”²⁷ even when one meant by the term “Koran” the created utterance of it. In fact, there were some, as reported by Ash‘ari in his Makalat, who, because of their belief in the uncreatedness of the pre-existent Koran and the createdness of the utterance of it, expressed themselves by saying that “part of the Koran is created and part of it uncreated,”²⁸ and it is with evident reference to them that Ash‘ari in his Ibanah concludes his discussion with the appendage: “And it may not be said that part of the Koran is created, for the Koran in its entirety is uncreated,”²⁹ thus following Ibn Hanbal’s view that one is not to predicate the term “created” of the Koran in any way whatsoever. Similarly Ibn Hazm follows the view of Ibn Hanbal, but, instead of explaining that view on the mere ground of religious scrupulousness, as in fact it is done later by Ibn Haldun,³⁰ he tries to explain it on the ground of some logical principle by which a proposition may be judged true or false.

The passage in which Ibn Hazm tries to explain the view of Ibn Hanbal by some logical principle reads as follows: “Inasmuch as the term Koran applies with equal appropriateness to five things, of which four are created and one is not created, it is definitely not allowed for any one to say that the Koran is created nor, by the same token, to say that the Word of God is created, for he who says this is a liar, since he applies the description of creation to something signified by the term Koran and by the expression Word of God, to which the term creation does not apply. And it is logically necessary that it should be said that the Koran is neither creator nor created and that the Word of God is neither creator nor created, for, inasmuch as four of the things which are named by these terms are not creators [even though the fifth thing, the Word of God, IS CREATOR], it is not allowed to apply unqualifiedly the term creator to the terms Koran and Word of God, and, inasmuch as the fifth thing [named by these terms] is not created, [it is not allowed to apply unqualifiedly the term created to the terms Koran and the Word of God]. And [in general] it is not [logically] admissible to apply to the subject as a whole any predicate that is true only of part of the subject and not of the whole of it; rather is it necessary that a predicate which is true only of part of a subject should be negated of the subject as a whole.”³¹ He then proceeds to illustrate the truth of this general principle by a number of concrete propositions.

The reasoning underlying Ibn Hazm’s general principle with its illustrative propositions is based, I think, upon Aristotle’s discussion of the various meanings of the term “whole” (olon, al-kull). “Whole,” says Aristotle, may also be taken to mean “that which so contains the things it contains that they form a unity; and this in two ways.”³² In one way, the whole is any universal term, such as the term “man,” which includes many individual human beings, all of whom form one single species referred to as man.³³ In another way, the whole may consist of “many things” which actually exist as many things, but have become a “whole” or “one” by having been made “artificially” into a bundle “by a band.”³⁴

Starting with this twofold meaning of the term “whole,” Ibn Hazm argues that, in the case of a proposition in which the subject is a whole in either of these two ways and in which the predicate is not applicable to all the things that are contained in the subject, the proposition cannot be true if the predicate is affirmed of the subject; it can be true only if the predicate is negated of the subject. He illustrates his principles by propositions in which the subjects are “wholes” of the two kinds mentioned by Aristotle. First, taking the “whole” in the sense in which many actually existing things are artificially made into a unity by a band, he says that, if of five garments, that is to say, of five garments which have been artificially made into one whole, four are red and one is not red, then the proposition “these garments [conceived of as one whole] are red” is quite evidently false, but the proposition “these garments [again, conceived of as one whole] are not red” is quite evidently true.³⁵ Second, taking the “whole” in the sense of a universal which contains many individuals conceived of as one whole, such as genus or species, he says that the proposition that “man [that is, the human species as a whole] is a physician” is quite evidently false, but the proposition that “man [that is, again, the human species as a whole] is not a physician” is quite evidently true.³⁶ 

On the basis of the principle laid down by him, namely, that, in the case of a subject which answers to Aristotle’s description of a “whole,” a predicate which is true of only part of the subject may be negated of the subject but not affirmed of it, he concludes that, inasmuch as the term “Koran” or the expression “the Word of God” is a “whole” which includes four things which are created and one thing which is not created, one may say logically that “the Koran or the Word of God is not created” but one may not say “the Koran or the Word of God is created.”³⁷

Further Reading

Quran: Uncreated, Created, or Originated?

Logos Christology’s Effect on the Sunni View of the Quran

Trinitarianism’s Impact on Salafism’s Humanoid Deity