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Is God a Person?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Gary Legenhausen
Gary Legenhausen
Affiliation:
Texas Southern University
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Extract

The most striking difference between Christian and Muslim theologies is that while, for Christians, God is a person, Muslims worship an impersonal deity. Despite the importance of this difference for a host of theological issues, it is a difference which has gone largely unnoticed by Christians and Muslims alike. Yet Christians everywhere will affirm that God is a person, while the average Muslim will readily deny this. Theism is often defined by philosophers of religion who work in the Christian tradition in such a manner as to require the belief that God is a person. Thus The Encyclopedia of Philosophy has it that, ‘THEISM signifies belief in one God (theos) who is (a) personal, (b) worthy of adoration, and (c) separate from the world but (d) continuously active in it”. John H. Hick admits that, ‘Theism…is strictly belief in a deity, but is generally used to mean belief in a personal deity”. Richard Swinburne states that a theist is one who believes that there is a God who is a ‘person without a body (i.e. a spirit) who is eternal, free, able to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the universe”, and J. L. Mackie, while arguing the case of atheism, endorses Swinburne's definition of theism.

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Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 3-4 , September 1986 , pp. 307 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

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page 308 note 1 Shari'ati, Ali, On the Sociology of Islam, trans Algar, Hamid (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1979), Passim.Google Scholar

page 307 note 1 This is the thesis of Clement Webb, C. J., God and Personality(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1920), pp. 61–89.Google Scholar Webb argues that Christians did not explicitly claim that God is a person, or had a personality until the nineteenth century. They spoke of persons in God, but not of the person of God. The point is debatable. Aquinas, for example, explicitly states that ‘…in God essence is not really distinct from person…’ (Summa Theologica 1, q. 39, a. 1)Google Scholar, although this claim is highly qualified.

page 307 note 2 The claim that God is one being whose persons differ only in relation to human understanding is the heresy of the third-century theologian Sabellius, and is condemned by Aquinas (Summa Theologica 1, 9. 31, a. 2).Google Scholar

page 311 note 1 Summa Theologica 1, q. 29, a. 3.Google Scholar

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page 313 note 1 Cf. Husik, Isaac, A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy (New York: Meridian Books, and Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960), p. xlv.Google Scholar

page 314 note 1 This explanation of the origin of the term kalam is given by al'Allamah as–Sayyid Muhammad Husayn at–Tabataba'i, Al–Mizan, trans. Rizvi, Sayyid Saeed Akhtar (Tehran: World Organization for Islamic Services, 1982) Vol. 4, pp. 149.Google Scholar For a conflicting explanation, see the extensive discussion in Wolfson, Harry Austryn, The Philosophy of the Kalam(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

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page 317 note 1 A similar observation is given caustic expression by Watts, Alan in his Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1947), pp. 133–5:Google Scholar‘After the Renaissance, to meet the rise of Humanism,…spirituality became more and more Christocentric, and at the same time quite alien to the traditions of Christian mysticism! Contemplation, as understood by the mediaeval mystics, was replaced by affective and imaginative devotion to the humanity ofJesus. From the standpoint of mysticism this was a disaster based on a misunderstanding of the Incarnation, for it made the divine humanity transcendent and humanized the mystery of God.…When…theology tries to achieve a compromise between immanence and transcendence, both are deprived of their effect. God is not quite immanent and not quite transcendent.…” This passage is anthologized in Hartshorne, Charles and Reese, William L., Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 325.Google Scholar Note that Watts does not claim that the compromise between immanence and transcendence is inherent in Christianity; rather he claims that this is a misguided response to renaissance humanism.

page 317 note 2 Webb, , p. 87.Google Scholar

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page 318 note 2 Ash–shaykh Abu Ja'far Muhammad Ibn Ya'qub Ibn Is'haq al–Kulayni Ar–Razi, Al–Kafi, vol. 1, Part One, 3, (II), trans. Rizvi, Sayyid Muhammad Hasan (Tehran: World Organization for Islamic Services, 1980), pp. 209–16.Google Scholar

page 318 note 3 In conversation, 11 February 1985, Tehran.

page 319 note 1 Shirazi, Sadr al-Din, The Wisdom of the Throne, trans. Morris, James Winston (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 96.Google Scholar

page 319 note 2 Ibid. p. 100.

page 320 note 1 Summa Theologica 1, q. 29, a. 3. Notice that just as in Al-Kafi it is claimed that God is a thing for to deny this would be to deny that He exists, Aquinas argues that God is a substance for to deny this would be to deny that He subsists. ‘Subsistence’ is a technical term in Thomistic philosophy. The imperfect subsistence of secondary substance distinguishes one species from another. The perfect subsistence of first substances is that by which one individual is distinct from all others. In the philosophy of Mulla Sadra and contemporary Shi'ite theology the subsistence of God would be rejected. Differences belong to creation, while God is the undifferentiated ground of all being, pure existence. Cf. note 3, p.0011.

page 320 note 2 Hick, John, ‘Christianity”, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1972, II, p. 106.Google Scholar

page 321 note 1 Cf. Rahman, Fazlur, The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975).Google Scholar

page 321 note 2 Khomeini, Imam, Islam and Revolution, trans. Algar, Hamid (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981), pp. 406–7.Google Scholar

page 322 note 1 Shirazi, Sadr al–Din, p. 99.Google Scholar

page 323 note 1 Küng, Hans, Does God Exist? (London: Collins, 1980), pp. 632–3.Google Scholar Cited in Mackie, , p. 244.Google Scholar