John Hare’s God’s Command, 6.3.3, “Al-Maturidi”

What’s the relation Al-Maturidi sees between reason and revelation? He claims there are three possible outcomes of reasoning. The first is that the thinker will be led to the knowledge of being created and to see that he has a Creator who will reward him for his good and punish him for his bad deeds, which will inspire him to adopt that which pleases Him. The second is that the thinker will deny all this, and indulge himself in all kinds of pleasure, which will have its consequence in the hereafter. The third is that the thinker will be led to the realization of the incomprehensibility of knowledge and its reality which inspired him to search, but then his heart will rest and the pain will disappear that afflicts him when he tries to think. He doesn’t think the second outcome will happen, and that reasoning, whether on the first outcome or third, will be a gain to the thinker in all of its aspects.

He thinks that God has both given us a sign by way of which we can know God’s command, and He has stirred our mind to thought and reminded us of the various consequences of our actions. So if we disobey God, it’s only because we abandon the pursuit of reasoning and this is our fault. So we’ll be judged by the very thing that could have excused us. This is a result of our own act. Ignorance is no excuse, and that’s because God has given both the sign and the prompting, which are in happy harmony. Reflection will lead to belief in the very God who gives the command.

The important point here is al-Maturidi’s use of the language of “both/and,” in what Hare calls “two methods.” They are both theoretical intuition and the way of revelation. The way of revelation is clear, accessible within the domain of perceptible things. The way of speculative thought is hidden. It may start from something like theoretical intuition, but it requires difficult reflection about things that are beyond the reach of the senses. He makes these partners, though not equal partners.

Al-Maturidi also gives a role to reason in checking the reliability of reports. We need speculative thinking not merely to reflect about that which is beyond the reach of the senses, but also to check the kind of reports that may or may not be erroneous. He accepts the principle of credulity: that human beings have to rely on the reports of others and should therefore give initial credence to what someone tells them, as well as to what they receive through the senses and through reason. But what is received may be true or false, and needs to be tested by a form of knowledge that can discriminate between reliable and unreliable testimony. Al-Maturidi holds that the divine report (the Qur’an) and the Prophet’s personal reports pass this test, and are supported by the consensus of the faithful and by clear miraculous signs. But historical reports in general, and some of the traditions about the Prophet, do not have this degree of reliability.

Reason also has the function of showing that the universe has a purpose, being made by a rational Creator, for whom to act unwisely is a bad thing, who combines that which is properly combined and divides that which is properly divided, and who directs human beings in their different desires, divergent natures, and their various passions. He does, however, acknowledge that our reason has its own proper limits. For example, he thought Aristotle was misled by too ambitious an account of analogy.

We might say that al-Maturidi gives the place of a junior partner to reason in relation to divine command. It’s not, as in al-Jabbar, that revelation merely gives us instruments to what are already known as ends by reason. It’s not, as in al-Ash’ari, that reason simply works out the implications of what is already given by revelation. We could put the matter this way. For both al-Jabbar and al-Ash’ari there is only one final place for access to our proper ends; for the Mu’tazilite it is reason, and for al-Ash’ari it is revelation. But for al-Maturidi there are two, and they are mutually reinforcing. This is not to say that they are equal in status, for our human rational faculties were originated as finite and therefore are short of grasping the absolute reality of things. This is because the rational faculties are parts of the world which is in its entirety finite. The Qur’an is, al-Ash’ari and al-Maturidi agree, God’s own eternal word, received by the Prophet. But in the view of al-Maturidi, God has stirred our minds to be receptive to another source of value, the reason that God himself has for his command, and though we are divided in our nature, and our access to this source of value is not always reliable, we have been given difficult and partial access if we do the necessary hard work.

What can a divine command theorist learn from al-Maturidi? Many things, but here are three. First, it is consistent to hold both that God makes the divine command intelligible to us, even sometimes giving us access to the divine reason for the command, and to say that our access is only partial and difficult. The combination here comes from the fact that our nature is divided. God’s commands are more helpful even than our knowledge of ourselves. Second, it is consistent to hold both that we have the power to act in opposite ways, and that what we do is determined by the divine decree. This decree needs to be distinguished into what God reveals to us as the divine preference, which we can disappoint, and God’s final effective command, which always brings overall good. The three linked distinctions—between two kinds of power, two kinds of divine attitudes, and two kinds of divine decree—start to give us a way to hold together God’s sovereignty with our freedom. Finally, we can see in al-Maturidi an acknowledgment of the authority of both reason and revelation. He refuses to reduce the final authority of revelation to that of reason or vice versa. Reason is a junior partner; the idea is we need both, and not merely instrumentally. This is important for anyone living in a pluralistic culture. To some limited extent (because reason is the junior partner), we can rely on what is common between traditions to adjudicate disagreements between them.

In all three of these ways it’s instructive to compare al-Maturidi with Scotus. The two play some of the same mediating roles in the debates within their own communities. First, like al-Maturidi, Scotus is hesitant to allow a deduction from our nature to the moral law. They both thought there’s a consonance or fittingness of the commandments with our essence, and that our essence is to be pilgrims on the way to a certain relation to God. But our composite nature makes the deduction problematic, even though we can see the fittingness with our reason. Second, Scotus holds that we have the power of opposites, which is like al-Maturidi’s first kind of power. But God’s generosity leads to our good, despite our tendency towards what is not good. This generosity is consistent with the divine justice that punishes us when we fail to do what God commands by the revealed divine will. Finally, Scotus has the same combination of trust in human reason and emphasis on its limitations. He gives what is probably the most complex rational argument for the existence of God in the whole of Christian scholastic philosophy, and he is insistent on the need and capability of “right reason” to work out how we ought to live. On the other hand, he thinks we don’t know our own (individual) essence, or the essence of God, or who the people are that God has elected for salvation [I think that individualist take on election is wrong], and he is hesitant about saying that we know by reason what God must do.