Quran: Uncreated, Created, or Originated?

The following lengthy excerpt is taken from Harry Austryn Wolfson’s monumental work titled Philosophy of Kalam, published by Harvard University Press in 1976, pp. 291-304.

The work can be accessed here: Harry Austryn Wolfson The Philosophy Of The Kalam. All emphasis will be mine.

Wolfson shows that early Muslim debates were concerned with whether the Quran is uncreated or created, and whether it was created or originated within Allah’s essence, or outside of his essence. They even debated whether the Quran is the word (kalam) of Allah or his utterance (qol). These controversies resemble the early debates about Christ as the Logos of God and whether he was uncreated or brought into being.

IV. THE TERM MUHDATH, HADATH, AND HADITH AS APPLIED TO THE KORAN *

In the preceding sections we have dealt with the various views of those who speak of the Koran as created or as uncreated. We have shown how, with a few exceptions, the controversy was mostly over the question whether the Koran, which prior to its revelation existed in heaven on the Preserved Tablet, was uncreated or created. In Arabic, the terms used for “uncreated” and “created” in their application to the Koran are ghayr mahluk and mahluk,¹ and for “uncreated” Ibn Kullab is reported to have used ghayr mahluk wa-la muhdath. But there are reports, as we shall see, of certain people who, while they were opposed to the use of both mahluk and ghayr mahluk, allowed themselves the use of muhdath or hadath or hadith. Now the terms al-halk, “creation,” and al-ihdath, “origination, are both said to mean “the bringing of the nonexistent from nonexistence into existence.”² We should, therefore, expect that those who used the term muhdath or hadath or hadith as a description of the Koran would agree with those who used the term mahluk in the denial of the uncreatedness of the Koran. We can thus readily see why they should reject ghayr mahluk, “uncreated.” But why they should reject mahluk, “created,” and also why, having rejected mahluk, they should approve of muhdath, “originated,” or of hadath or of hadith is a question for which we shall try to find an answer.

Let us then examine the passages in which Ash‘ari reports on this change of terminology. We shall start with passages which report on the term muhdath. We shall quote two such passages.

In one of these passages Ash‘ari reports: “Muhammad b. Shajja‘ al-Thalji, and those from among the suspensors of judgment (al-wafikal) who agreed with him, said that the Koran is the Word of God and that it is originated (muhdath), namely, it was after it was not, and that it is God through whom it came to be and it is He who originated it, and they refrained from applying the term ahluk or the phrase ghayr mahluk. And Zahir al-Athiri said that the Koran is the Word of God and that it is originated (muhdath) but not created (mahluk).”³

In this passage, the fact that the use made of the term muhdath by Thalji is explained as meaning that the Word of God came into being after it had not been quite definitely places him among those who believed in the createdness of the Koran, most of whom expressed their belief by using the term mahluk, for believers in the createdness of the Koran who used the term mahluk are reported to have expressed themselves by saying that the Koran, which is the Word of God, “was not, then it was,”⁴ the very same expression used here by Thalji. His apparent objection to the use of the term mahluk, while using the term muhdath in the very same sense as the term mahluk, may be explained if we assume that Thalji, like those suspensors of judgment who agreed with him, was himself a suspensor of judgment. In his Ibanah, dealing with the suspensors of judgment, Ash‘ari says that the reason they refrain from using both mahluk and ghayr mahluk is that the Koran never describes itself explicitly either by the term mahluk or by the term ghayr mahluk.⁵ In the light of this statement, then, Thalji’s refusal to use mahluk, despite his belief in the createdness of the Koran, is to be explained as being simply due to the fact that the term is not used in the Koran in connection with itself. This however, raises the question why, having rejected the term mahluk on the ground that it is not used in the Koran in connection with itself, he should not have also rejected the term muhdath, for this term, too, is not used in the Koran in connection with itself.

An explanation why the objection raised against mahluk on the score of its having no Koranic sanction was not applied by Thalji to muhdath may be found in a report of a controversy between Ibn Hanbal and those who believed in the createdness of the Koran as to the meaning of the term dhikr, admonition,” as qualified by the term muhdath, “innovated,” “new,” “originated,” which occurs twice in the Koran (21:2; 26:4). It would seem that there were some who took the fern dhikr, “admonition,” in these two places to mean the Koran and hence from the fact that in these two places dhikr is described as muhdath, “innovated,” “new,” “originated,” they inferred that the Koran was created. As against then Ibn Hanbal argued that while indeed the definite al-dhikr “the admonition,” means the Koran, the indefinite dhikr is ambition,” which is used in the two verses in the Koran, does not mean the Koran.⁶ Evidently Thalji and those suspensors of judgment who agreed with him sided with the opponents of Ibn Hanbal in taking the term dhikr in the expression dhikr muhdath, which occurs twice in the Koran, to refer to the Koran itself, and consequently they came to describe the Koran by the term muhdath.

The other passage which reports on the use of the term muhdath, reads as follows: “And it came to my attention concerning one of the masters of the Fikh that he said that God is eternally a speaker in the sense that eternally He possesses the power to speak, and that he also said that the Word of God is muhdath and not mahluk. This is the opinion of Da’ud al-Isbahani [=Da’ud b. ‘Ali b. Halaf al-Isbahani al-Zahiri].”⁷ 

This passage occurs amidst a group of passages, each of which begins with the statement “the Koran is the Word of God” and all of which are placed under the general heading “Discourse concerning the Koran.” Moreover, according to a report quoted by al-Sam‘ani, the statement attributed here to al-Zahiri reads that “the Koran is muhdath.”⁸ Consequently, the statement here that “the Word of God is muhdath” means that “the Koran is the Word of God and it is muhdath and not mahluk,” thus expressing the same view as that of the preceding statement of Thalji, namely, that the Koran was created. Undoubtedly the reason for the substitution here of muhdath for mahluk is the same as in Thalji, namely, that the term mahluk is not used in the Koran as a description of itself.

The additional statement, with which the passage opens, namely, that “God is eternally a speaker in the sense that eternally He possesses the power to speak” is of special significance. It is meant to be an answer to an objection that has been raised against the belief in the createdness of the Koran. The objection, as phrased by Ash‘ari in his Ibanah, reads as follows: “Know that, by the belief of the Jahmiyyah that the Word of God is created, they are compelled to admit that God would have been from all eternity like the idols, which have neither speech nor language . . . But how can one with reference to whom speech is impossible from eternity be a God?”⁹ To this objection Zahiri’s answer here is that even though the Koran was created, God could still be described as being eternally a speaker if that description is taken to mean that eternally He possesses the power to speak, so that even before He was actually a speaker He could be called a speaker proleptically, in anticipation of the actual speaker that He was to become. The reasoning employed here by Zahiri in his answer is analogous to the reasoning employed by Hippolytus and Novatian among the Church Fathers. Thus Hippolytus argues that even though before the incarnation the Logos was not yet a “perfect son,” God still addressed him as son “because he was to be begotten in the future”;¹⁰ and Novatian, who believed in the twofold stage of existence in the pre-existent Logos, similarly argues that even though the Logos generated or proceeded from the Father only prior to the creation of the world, God could always be called Father in anticipation of the future generation of the Logos as son.¹¹ Whether Zahiri’s answer implies a twofold stage theory of the existence of the pre-revealed Koran analogous to the twofold stage theory of the existence of the preincarnational Christ¹² cannot be ascertained.¹³

So much for the substitution of the term muhdath for the term mahluk. Let us now take up the substitution of the term hadath for mahluk.

The passages which report on this substitution read as follows:

“Abu Mu‘adh al-Tumani said: The Koran is the Word of God and it is an origination (hadath) and not that which was originated (muhdath) and an action (fil) and not that which was produced by an action (maf‘ul), and he refrained from saying that it is a creation (halk). He says that it is neither a creation (halk) nor that which was created (halk), that it subsists in God, and that it is impossible that God should speak with a word that subsists in something other than in Him, just as it is impossible that He should move with a movement which subsists in something other than in Him. And thus he also says with regard to will (iradah) and love (mahabbah) and wrath (bughd) that they all subsist in God.”¹⁴ In another passage, al-Tamani is reported to have said that “the Word of God is neither an accident nor a body and it subsists in God; and it is impossible that the Word of God should subsist in something other than in Him, just as this is impossible in the case of His will (iradah) and His love (mahabbah) and His wrath (bughd).”¹⁵ 

In the first of these passages, the fact that Tumani rejects both mahluk and muhdath shows that he is against the createdness of the Koran as it is generally expressed in the statement quoted above: “It was not, then it was.” The fact that he accepts the term hadath shows that the term which means “origination,” unlike the term which means “originated,” is not taken by him to mean the createdness of the Koran in its usual sense that it was not and then it was. That Tumani used the term hadath to express his opposition to the createdness of the Koran in its usual sense can be further shown from the fact that in both passages quoted he compares the Word, with reference to its subsistence in God, to the attributes of will (iradah) and love (mahabbah) and wrath (bughd), for a similar comparison is used by those who believed in the uncreatedness of the Koran as an argument against those who believed in its createdness. Thus, in opposition to the Jahmiyyah, who believed that the Word of God was created,¹⁶ Ash‘ari argues that “since God’s anger (ghadab) is uncreated, and likewise His favor (ridan) and His displeasure (suht), why do you not believe that His Word is uncreated?”¹⁷ The question that may be raised, why Tumani, who distinguishes between muhdath “originated,” and hadath, “origination,” and, while rejecting the former, accepts the latter, should not also distinguish between mahluk, “created,” and halk, “creation,” and thus also accept the latter, may be answered that the term halk, unlike the term hadath, does not occur in the Koran in connection with itself. As for the question, why then did he accept the term fil, “action,” which like the term halk is not used in the Koran in connection with itself, it may be answered that, though the verb fa‘al is not used in the Koran in connection with itself, its equivalent, the verb ja‘al, is used in connection with the Koran in the verse ““We have made it (ja‘alnahu) an Arabic Koran that ye may understand.”¹⁸ In fact, Ibn Hanbal, in his defense of the uncreatedness of the Koran, argued that the word ja‘al does not mean the same as halak.¹⁹ 

In the second passage, the statement that “the Word of God is neither an accident nor a body and it subsists in God; and it is impossible that the Word of God should subsist in something other than God” is obviously aimed at the Ja‘fars and Abu al-Hudhayl who held that the Word of God was created either as an accident or as a body on the Preserved Tablet.²⁰ 

But here a new question arises. If by hadath, “origination,” Tumani meant the denial of the createdness of the Koran, why did he not use the already established phrase ghayr mahluk, “uncreated”? What need was there for him to introduce into the discussion of the problem this new and unheard of term hadath? And if he objected to the phrase ghayr mahluk because it is based upon a verb which is not used in the Koran in connection with itself, why then did he not use the phrase ghayr muhdath, “unoriginated,” which is more explicit and more meaningful than the term hadath, “origination,” as a rejection of the createdness of the Koran? Since Tumani has chosen the term hadath in preference to the phrase ghayr mahluk or ghayr muhdath to express his opposition to the createdness of the Koran, it is to be assumed that the opposition to the createdness of the Koran implied by the use of hadath is different from the opposition implied in ghayr mahluk or ghayr muhdath, What then is the difference? In order to discover some kind of difference between the denial of the createdness of the Koran implied in hadath and the denial of it implied in ghayr mahluk or ghayr muhdath, we shall first try to find out if ghayr mahluk or ghayr muhdath could have some other implication besides the mere denial of the createdness of the Koran in the sense that it had a beginning of existence, and if we find that it could have some other implication, we shall be justified in assuming that it is that other implication that the use of the term hadath proposes to eliminate.

Logically, the negative phrase ghayr mahluk, “not created,” or ghayr muhdath, “not originated,” in itself could have a twofold meaning. It could mean not only a denial of a beginning of existence but also a denial of a cause of existence; for just as “created” or “originated” implies not only a beginning of existence but also a cause of existence, so also “uncreated” or “unoriginated” could imply not only a denial of a beginning of existence but also a denial of a cause of existence. Though those who believed in the uncreatedness of the Koran and expressed themselves by the use of ghayr mahluk quite certainly used that phrase in the exclusive sense of a denial of a beginning of existence, without meaning to deny thereby that the Koran had a cause for its existence, still the phrase ghayr mahluk used by them, as well as the phrase ghayr muhdath that could be used by them, in itself is ambiguous and it might be taken to mean both “eternal” and “causeless.” Tumani wanted to eliminate that ambiguity and so he was in search of some term that would describe the Koran as having no beginning of existence, while at the same time it would describe it also as having a cause of existence.

Now a problem similar to this faced here by Tumani had been faced long before him in Christianity by Origen and in Greek philosophy by Plotinus. Origen believed that the Logos was eternal, and Plotinus similarly believed that the Nous was eternal, but both of them believed that the Logos or the Nous was dependent upon God as its cause, for they both believed that the Logos or the Nous was generated from God. So what did they do? They coined a new Greek expression, gennesis aidios, “eternal generation,” by which they described the generation of the Logos or of the Nous by or from God.²¹ Now an Arabic translation of this expression would be taulid azali or wiladah azaliyyah, but no term meaning or implying “begetting” could Tumani, as a faithful Muslim, use in connection with God, for the Koran, in conformity with its oft-repeated disapprobation of the Christian conception of God as begetter,^21a admonishingly proclaims: “God begets not (lam yalid).”²² According to the Koran, God ‘made (ja‘ala),”²³ God “created (halaka),”²⁴ God “only says to a thing ‘Be,’ and it is,”²⁵ but God does not beget. And so the best Taimani could do was to use the term hadath, “origination,” relying upon the reader to infer from the context that it is to be taken in the sense of “eternal origination.” Whether, like the eternally generated Logos in Christianity,”²⁶ the eternally originated Koran of Tumani also existed as a completely originated Word or whether it was in an eternal process of origination, there is no way of telling.^26a 

Now for those who use the term hadith as a description of the Koran.

Juwayni in his Irshad, after reporting that among those who denied the eternity of “the Word of God” there were some who refrained from applying to it the term mahluk but applied to it the term muhdath,²⁷ reports the view of the Karramiyyah, which, in the light of our discussion above of their view on attributes,²⁸ may be restated as follows.

As in their view on attributes they say that God is called eternal Creator because He has an eternal power to create, so also here they say that “the Word (kalam) of God is eternal” because He has an eternal “power to speak.”²⁹ Again, as in their view on attributes they say that God’s utterance (kaul) of the command “Be” is created and subsists in the essence of God, so also here they say that “the Koran, which is the utterance (kaul) of God and not the Word (kalam) of God . . . is created and subsists in the essence of God.”³⁰ Then, following the distinction they made in their view on attributes between the term hadith and the term muhdath, applying the former to that which is originated in the essence of God and the latter to that which is originated outside the essence of God, they say here that it is the term hadith that is to be applied to the utterance of God, which is the Koran;³¹ for, as they explain, “everything which has a beginning of existence and which subsists in the essence of God is to be described as hadith, and not as muhdath, by the [eternal] power [of God].”³² Finally, just as in their view on attributes they say that the utterance (kaul) of the command “Be” is created by God in His essence when He creates any body or any accident in the world, so also here, we may assume, they would say that the utterance (kaul) of the Koran was created in the essence of God when the Koran was put on the Preserved Tablet, assuming that the Karramiyyah followed the orthodox view on this point.³³ And so, though the statement of the Karramiyyah that “the Word of God” is His eternal power to speak” is the same as the statement quoted above from Zahiri,³⁴ the views meant to be expressed by this common statement are not the same. Zahiri, with his use of the term muhdath, rejected the orthodox belief in the uncreatedness of the Koran but agreed, as we have seen, with the Muttazilite belief that the Koran was created, that is, it was created on the Preserved Tablet; the Karramiyyah, with their use of the term hadith, disagree with both the orthodox and the Muttazilites, maintaining that the Koran was created in the essence of God.

References to the Karramiyyah’s view on the Koran are to be found also in Baghdadi’s and Shahrastini’s discussions of the Karramiyyah’s view on attributes.

Baghdadi in his Fark, after stating, in the name of the Karramiyyah, that “God is eternally a Speaker because of a Word (kalam), which is His power-to-utter” but that “His utterance (kaul) consists of letters originating (hadithah) in Him,” concludes that “the utterance of God, according to them, is therefore originating (hadith) in Him, but His Word is eternal.”³⁵

While Baghdadi, like Juwayni, in reproducing the view of the Karramiyyah, distinguishes between “the Word of God” and “the utterance of God,” Shahrastani makes of that distinction two meanings of the expression “the Word of God.” Thus in one place in his Nihayat he distinguishes between the Word (kalam) of God” in the sense of “the power-to- utter” and “the Word of God” in the sense of “utterance” (kaul), the latter of which is described as that which “originates in His essence,”³⁶ with the implication that the former is eternal. In another place in his Nihayat, evidently using the expression “the Word of God” in the sense of God’s “utterance,” he says that “His Word consists of attributes which originate in Him —and these are expressions made up of consonants and vowels, according to some, or of consonants only, according to others — so that it is hadith, neither eternal nor muhdath.”³⁷ 

Let us now recapitulate our discussion.

In addition to the two well-known views as to whether the Koran is mahluk or ghayr mahluk, there are reports of three other views, of which one says that the Koran is muhdath, another that it is hadath, and a third that it is hadith. The first two views, as we have seen, are revisions respectively of the older two views as to whether the Koran was mahluk, “created,” or ghayr mahluk, “uncreated,” substituting, in the former case, the term muhdath for mahluk and, in the latter case, the term hadath for the term ghayr mahluk. The reason for the substitution of muhdath for mahluk as a description of the createdness or noneternity of the Koran is that in the Koran the term mahluk is never used as a description of the origin of the Koran, whereas the term muhdath is used as such a description. The reason for the substitution of hadath for ghayr mahluk as a description of the uncreatedness or eternity of the Koran is that ghayr mahluk might mean eternal not only in the sense of beginningless but also in the sense of causeless, whereas hadath, taken in the sense of continuous origination, while it means eternal in the sense of beginningless, can never be taken to mean causeless.³⁸ The third view rejects both the orthodox view that the Koran was ghayr mahluk, “uncreated,” and the Muttazilite view that it was mahluk (or its equivalent muhdath), “created,” that is, created on the Preserved Tablet substituting for both of them the view that the Koran was hadith, meaning thereby that it was created in the essence of God.

³⁸ In an article by W. Montgomery Watt, entitled “Early Discussions about the Qur’an,” Muslim World, 40 (1950), commenting upon the use of muhdath by Zahir al-Athiri (quoted above at n. 3) and upon the use of hadath by Aba Mu‘adh al-Tamani (quoted above at nn. 14, 15), the author says (pp. 38-39): “In general their position was similar to that of Ahmad [b. Hanbal], but they were ready to make some concessions. Zahir would not admit that the Qur’an was ‘created,’ but in view of the fact that it had been in time he applied to it the word ‘originated’ (muhdath). Abu Mu'adh did not quite go so far; the Qur’an was not ‘originated’ but an origination’ (or perhaps rather ‘event’-hadath), not what is done in an act (maful) but the act itself (fi'l); it was truly the Word of God, and was subsisting in God (qa’im bi-illah), not in anything other than God. These views cannot be adequately criticized without fuller knowledge than we possess of the general position of the theologians in question; but it is fairly clear that while they are nobly trying to hold on to both the belief that the Qur’an is the Word of God and the fact that it appeared at definite point in time, they had not quite grasped the fundamental point Ahmad was insisting upon –  that the Qur’an expresses something of the essential character of God.’

According to our interpretation, Zahir al-Athiri, with his use of muhdath, and Aba Mu‘adh al-Tumani, with his use of hadath, are diametrically opposed to each other. Zahir al-Athiri belongs to those who maintained that the Koran was “created,” but for a certain reason he objected to the use of the term mahluk. Abu Mu‘udh al-Tumani belongs to those who maintained that the Koran was “uncreated,” but again for a certain reason he objected to the use of the phrase ghayr mahuk.

Further Reading

Trinitarianism’s Impact on Salafism’s Humanoid Deity

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