The Muslim theologian Ibn Taymiyyah on God, creation and time

Abstract

God] created the heavens and the earth in six days, and His throne was on the water."(Qurʾān 11:7) The Islamic tradition, along with the Jewish and Christian traditions, confesses one eternal God who originates a world characterized by time.Like their Jewish and Christian counterparts, Muslim theologians face the question of how this eternal God interacts and intersects with the temporality of the world, which leads them into debate over whether the world is eternal or had a beginning, as well as reflection on the nature of God's eternity.After briefly surveying classical and medieval Islamic approaches to the question of God, creation, and time, I will give primary attention to the Damascene theologian Ibn Taymiyyah (d.1328) who takes the unusual step of bridging God's eternity and the world's temporality by locating time in the essence of God.This study is an exercise in the history of theology and philosophy that seeks to explore how ideas developed and how they fit together. The kalām theologiansThe three major streams of kalām theology formulated and nurtured the dominant Muslim understanding of God's relation to the world and time.The Muʿtazilī stream extended from the eighth century to the thirteenth before dying out as a movement in its own right.Twelver and Zaydī Šīʿīs adopted many Muʿtazilī doctrines and have continued the tradition into the present.The ʾAšʿarī kalām theologians take their name from ʾAbū Ḥasan al-ʾAšʿarī (d.935), who broke away from the Muʿtazilīs to defend divine predestination and other doctrines.The Māturīdī kalām theologians derive from the central Asian theologian al-Māturīdī (d.944).ʾAšʿarī and Māturīdī theologies dominated Sunni Islam through the early twentieth century and remain vibrant to the present day.Muʿtazilī, ʾAšʿarī, and Māturīdī theologians differ over key issues such as human freedom and the origin of evil.However, 1 I am grateful for the support of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship during the writing of this chapt