Alhamdulillah. Aristotelians had great difficulty explaining change in the universe. As we mentioned at the beginning of this work, to Aristotle, the final cause, the unmoved mover, must be changeless, undifferentiated and undifferentiating, thus He does not instigate any new action or influence. How does change happen in the universe, then? This unmoved mover has the celestial spheres rotating in their place in wonderment of Him, without Him exerting any force on them, because, well, He must be changeless, and no succession of events can subsist in Him. He is pure actuality with no unactualized potential. The philosophers of this school have gone as far as denying God’s knowledge of the particulars of this universe. To them, His knowledge of those changing particulars amounts to a relational change in His knowledge.

Aristotle believed in an eternal universe without beginning. His doctrines about God being a final cause, not an effective one, were consistent with his erroneous notion of the eternity of the universe. The notion that change cannot subsist in the Pre-Eternal is not a matter of agreement among the earlier philosophers, as Ibn Rushd (rA) asserts.^[1] You can find in Plato’s dialogues indications of that. He says, “Can we ever be made to believe that motion and life and soul are not present with perfect being [God]? Can we imagine that being is devoid of life and mind, and exists in awful unmeaningness, an everlasting fixture?”^[2] Recently, the concept has been further challenged by many, like the evolutionary idealists in their understanding of the creative spirit.^[3]

This concept of a static god of completely actualized potential makes it metaphysically impossible for that god to be effectively related to a changing world. It also seems to come into irreconcilable conflict with the Quranic description of God, as in the following verses and others:

قُلِ اللَّهُ يَبْدَأُ الْخَلْقَ ثُمَّ يُعِيدُهُ

“Say, ‘Allah begins creation and then repeats it’.” [Yoonus 10:34]

كُلَّ يَوْمٍ هُوَ فِي شَأْنٍ

“… every day He is bringing about a matter.” [Al-Raĥmân 55:29]

لَعَلَّ اللَّهَ يُحْدِثُ بَعْدَ ذَٰلِكَ أَمْرًا

“…perhaps Allah will bring about after that a [different] matter.” [Al-Ţalâq 65:1]

The temporality of creatures means that Allah has successive acts of creation. The Quran describes a God who engages with His temporal creations, time and again, as He wills, while acknowledging that time itself is His creation, so He is not bound by it, just as He is not bound by space. And while we agree that the essential attributes of the perfect and eternal are not subject to change, this should not mean that He may not be described by those Quranic accounts. The initiation of a certain action does not necessarily indicate a change of an attribute of the essence. His power is eternal, but its actualized deliverances happen in succession. They are still His. He is actively influencing every atom and every accident in His universe. None of this means a change of His essence, which is unbefitting of the Eternal without beginning or end, and there is no need to say that emergent events subsist in Him (taḥullu feehi al-ḥawâdith). These are not the scriptural terms. We will describe Him with the verses above and their like. This writer also believes that there is no reason to call the individual acts ṣifât (qualities/attributes) except in the sense that they could be predicated of God. Their species is qadeem (pre-eternal), and these are what could be described as qualities. And as Ibn al-Qayyim points out in Madârij al-Sâlikeen, even regarding the attributes of the face and hands, the disagreement over calling those predications “qualities” is a disagreement of form, not substance, and what matters is the amodal affirmation of their attribution to the Divine as He has stated in the Revelation.^[4]–^[i]

Imam Ibn Taymiyyah (rA) asserts that the people before Imam Ibn Kullâb (rA) were of two types: Ahl al-Sunnah, who affirmed the essential attributes (both rational and scriptural) and the volitional attributes, and the Mu‘tazilah, who denied both because of the concern about composition in the essence of God. Then, Ibn Kullâb approved of the first group and rejected the second. He was followed in this respect by Imam Abu al-Ḥasan al-Ashari (rA).^[5]–^[ii]

What made the imams of Mutakallimeen deny those volitional attributes is, of course, not their blind following of Aristotle, but the fact that this was the prevalent philosophy of the time and they not only believed it, but they also used it to underpin their cosmological proof of God’s existence. This theory proposes that accidents such as stillness and movement cannot simultaneously subsist in one entity, so they happen in succession, and thus must be originated, not eternal (the definitiveness of which al-Râzi [rA] himself denied, because as they may be eternal without end in paradise even while succeeding one another, it may be argued that they are also eternal in the past). Bodies (ajsâm) cannot exist without certain accidents (a‘râd) such as movement and stillness, for instance. If so, and we have established that accidents are temporal not eternal, then all bodies are temporal as well, thus, the world originated at some point. This would then lead us to ask who originated it, and through sabr and taqseem (enumeration and division, or the process of elimination) we can establish that God is the one who created it.

To the Mutakallimeen, this was their strongest rational proof regarding the creation of the universe by God. This means, though, that temporally originated accidents must not subsist in God, lest He be temporal, not eternal. This would lead to the denial of the volitional attributes. However, since it is impossible to deny the creation of things one after another, or the giving of life and death and providing, et cetera, the Mutakallimoon had a dilemma to solve. The Maturidis said that God has an eighth essential attribute, and they called it takween (genesis): a sort of eternal umbrella attribute for all those actions. The Ash‘aris argued that those actions are not attributes, and they do not subsist in the dhât (ipseity) of God, but rather, the attribute of qudrah which is eternal has actualization relationality (ta‘alluq tanjeezi) with its different actualizations in the particulars.

To Atharis, neither proposition provides a satisfactory answer, and neither solves the problem of His active creation and control. Calling it actualization relationality (ta‘alluq tanjeezi) leaves us with a term that would still need to be qualified. Is this a mental conception or an extant reality outside the mind? If it is the first, it does not solve any problem in the extramental reality. If it is the second, it still attributes a relational change in the exercise of qudrah. Also, as Ibn Rushd (rA) stated, the issue that needs explanation is not the lag between the pre-eternal will and the creation of the universe, but rather between the act of creating by the Creator and the created coming into existence, particularly if the Creator is omnipotent. There is no way, he asserts, that the relationship between the Creator and the created at the time of creation is the same as it is at other times.^[6] The only way to not concede to the philosophers’ proposition about a “beginningless” world is by rejecting their conception of a god who is undifferentiated and undifferentiating, and affirming his volitional attributes. The concept of ta‘alluq tanjeezi of the qudrah or the umbrella attribute of takween do not provide a satisfactory solution, no more so than do Philo’s interpolation of the logos between God and the world and all of the emanationist theories, including the spiritual substances or “intelligences” Avicenna places between God and the world to explain how God can exercise temporal influence on His temporal creations.^[7]

The Quran and the Sunnah abound with ascriptions of actions to God that happen in succession. Allah says,

هُوَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ لَكُم مَّا فِي الْأَرْضِ جَمِيعًا ثُمَّ اسْتَوَىٰ إِلَى السَّمَاءِ فَسَوَّاهُنَّ سَبْعَ سَمَاوَاتٍ

“It is He who created for you all that which is on the earth. Then He directed Himself to the heaven, [His being above all creation,] and made them seven heavens.” [Al-Baqarah 2:29]

وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَاكُمْ ثُمَّ صَوَّرْنَاكُمْ ثُمَّ قُلْنَا لِلْمَلَائِكَةِ اسْجُدُوا لِآدَمَ

“And We have certainly created you [O Humankind] and given you [human] form. Then We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate to Adam’.” [Al-A`râf 7:11]

The Quran describes a God that is actively creating and controlling every atom and accident of His creation. The matter is simple, in our belief, and the answer to the issue of change being a sign of origination lies in the following responses.

The belief in the attributes of voluntary actions that are mentioned throughout the Quran and the Sunnah is an affirmation of the perfection of the Lord and His omnipotence. It is essential for our perception of His relatability and presence, which are the Islamic counterparts of the Christian doctrine of immanence. If you give people a choice between a dynamic world and a static god, most will choose the dynamic world, because it is there affecting every moment of their lives.

The philosophers do not agree that any action of an agent necessitates a change in it.^[8] We do not speak of change in God’s essence, because that is unbefitting of the Eternal, and we do not speak of accidents subsisting in Him. We only affirm His actions as He spoke of them. Activity would necessarily mean change in the condition of the agent if he had to conform to the matter he is creating or reforming, or to exert effort to execute his volitions, such that “his acts are the expression of demands made upon him by conditions external to himself.”^[9] Imagine a tiller who must comply with the physical conditions of soil, nurture, sunshine, and so on.^[10] If God, however, has infinite power, then His voluntary action is simply pure self-expression that is “concerned with nothing foreign or external to the self; it neither adds something not of the self to the self, nor makes something of the self into that which is not of the self.”^[11]

The rejection of change in perfect life is a product of the quantitative concept of God that is limited by the substance category. It is a limitation of the human mind which sees change as only disintegrative or augmentative, and then refuses to ascribe either to God. The question is whether we ought to apply those limitations to God. First, it is obvious that disintegrative and augmentative change is entirely unacceptable concerning God, because it means that he was not at some point perfect and then became perfect, or the opposite. However, none of those categories of human understanding bind God, so His voluntary actions do not need to be fitted into either type of change.

The inclusion of the “many activities” into the perfect one is not rejected by all philosophers. Hegel, for one, showed that this is possible as long as the many are “activities in a subject or spirit.”^[12] He went as far as stating that “A quality is a quality and nothing more; it belongs to the substance; an activity, on the contrary, is more than a particular activity; it is the subject.”^[13] His rejection of many qualities in a substance, when it comes to the perfect one, is based on the limitations of the substance category. We do not say that God is a substance, anyway. As for the distinction between activities and qualities, this writer believes that the individual acts of God are not other than God, but do not need to be described as qualities; the qualities are the species of those acts. His hearing the mujâdilah at the time she was talking to the Prophet is real, and while it is predicated of Him, it does not need to be described as a quality; the quality is the species, which is the Eternal hearing, of which His hearing this woman was a particular actualization.

The difficulty we have with the succession of events, and the reason some deny that a succession of events subsists in God, is that we cannot separate in our minds between the ‘before’ and the ‘past’ or the ‘after’ and the ‘future’ if the ‘now’ is the ‘present.’ The past, present, and future have different relations and values to us. But let us suppose that “the ‘before’ and the ‘after’ were all of equal clearness, equal intimacy, equal value…,”^[14] will we have the same thoughts about the mere sequential succession? I think not. Well, we are certain that, to God, time is His creation and He encompasses it. There is no difference in value between the ‘before’ and the ‘after.’

Regarding the concept that time is birthed from the universe, defined by the cycles of day and night and celestial motions, consider this hadith (reported by Muslim):
Abdullah b. ‘Amr b. al-‘As narrated: I once heard the Prophet (pbuh) state:

“‏كَتَبَ اللَّهُ مَقَادِيرَ الْخَلاَئِقِ قَبْلَ أَنْ يَخْلُقَ السَّمَوَاتِ وَالأَرْضَ بِخَمْسِينَ أَلْفَ سَنَةٍ – قَالَ – وَعَرْشُهُ عَلَى الْمَاءِ‏”‏‏.‏

“Allah set the destinies of creatures fifty thousand years before the creation of the heavens and the earth, with His Throne upon water.”
While our earthly understanding of time hinges on observable shifts, such as the sun’s passage or seasonal changes, absolute time operates beyond these confines.

To address the erroneous suggestion of God being bound by time if He acts sequentially, another hadith narrated by Abu Huraira in al-Bukhari and Muslim provides clarity:
The Prophet (pbuh) said,

“‏قَالَ اللَّهُ يَسُبُّ بَنُو آدَمَ الدَّهْرَ، وَأَنَا الدَّهْرُ، بِيَدِي اللَّيْلُ وَالنَّهَارُ”‏‏.‏

“Allah said, ‘The descendants of Adam criticize Time, but I am Time; within My Hands are the night and the day.'”
Thus, time itself is a result of God’s unceasing actions and perpetual agency.

The proof of accidents and the origination of bodies is not the strongest proof for God’s existence, let alone the only one. It is also not indubitable. Most philosophers believed in the “beginninglessness” of the universe; had it been an indubitable rational proof, it would have been obvious to the people endowed with intellect. However, the proof of change may be still used because the change in this universe is a change of the essence. Do you not see that we decompose and turn into dust, and the dust turns into plants which are eaten by animals? Change of the essence and essential attributes is not conceivable of the Eternal, but this does not preclude Him from engaging His creation temporally and effecting His eternal qudrah in successive acts of creation, provision, giving life and death, and yes, istiwâ’ and nuzool (descending).

Aside from that proof in itself, we may also say that we cannot infer from the shahâdah about the ghayb, so the principles applied to the universe through our empirical experience may not be applied to God.

]كُلَّ يَوْمٍ هُوَ فِي شَأْنٍ[

“… every day He is bringing about a matter.” [Al-Raĥmân 55:29]

The perfect essence does not change. God’s activity is not a change of His essence.

وصلى الله على محمد والحمد لله رب العالمين

[1] Abu al-Waleed Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd, Tahâfut al-Tahâfut, ed. Ṣalâḥ al-Deen al-Hawwâri (Beirut: al-Maktabah al-‘Aṣriyyah, 1432/2011), 46-47.

[2] Plato. The Dialogues of Plato, 4:380.

[3] H. A. Overstreet, “Change and the Changeless,” The Philosophical Review 18, no. 1 (1909): 1, https://doi.org/10.2307/2177157.

[4] Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, Madârij al-Sâlikeen, 3:323.

[5] Ibn Taymiyyah, Dar’ Ta‘âruḍ al-‘Aql wa al-Naql, 2:6.

[6] Ibn Rushd, Tahâfut al-Tahâfut, 48.

[7] James A. Arieti, and Patrick A. Wilson, The Scientific & the Divine: Conflict and Reconciliation from Ancient Greece to the Present (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003),158.

[8] Ibn Rushd, Tahâfut al-Tahâfut, 47.

[9] Overstreet, “Change and the Changeless,” 9.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid, 11.

[12] Ibid, 13.

[13] Ibid, 13.

[14] Ibid, 13.

[i] ابن القيم في مدارج السالكين: الفرق الثاني أن الصفات الذاتية لا يطلق عليها اسم النعوت، كالوجه واليدين والقدم والأصابع‘ وتسمى صفات، وقد أطلق عليها السلف هذا الاسم، وكذلك متكلمو أهل الإثبات سموها صفات، وأنكر بعضهم هذه التسمية، كأبي الوفاء بن عقيل وغيره، وقال: لا ينبغي أن يقال: نصوص الصفات، بل آيات الإضافات؛ لأن الحي لا يوصف بيده ولا وجهه، فإن ذلك هو الموصوف، فكيف تسمى صفة؟ وأيضا: فالصفة معنى يعم الموصوف، فلا يكون الوجه واليد صفة. والتحقيق أن هذا نزاع لفظي في التسمية، فالمقصود إطلاق هذه الإضافات عليه سبحانه ونسبتها إليه والإخبار عنه بها، منزهة عن التمثيل والتعطيل، سواء سميت صفات أو لم تسم.

[ii] ابن تيمية في الدرء: وكان الناس قبل أبي محمد بن كلاب صنفين، فأهل السنة والجماعة يثبتون ما يقوم بالله تعالى من الصفات والأفعال التي يشاؤها ويقدر عليها، والجهمية من المعتزلة وغيرهم تنكر هذا وهذا، فأثبت ابن كلاب قيام الصفات اللازمة به، ونفى أن يقوم به ما يتعلق بمشيئته وقدرته من الأفعال وغيرها، ووافقه على ذلك أبو العباس القلانسي وأبو الحسن الأشعري وغيرهما، وأما الحارث المحاسبي فكان ينتسب إلى قول ابن كلاب، ولهذا أمر أحمد بهجره، وكان أحمد يحذر من ابن كلاب وأتباعه، ثم قيل عن الحارث إنه رجع عن قوله.