- The mature MuÀtazilite and AshÀarite time-atomism foreshadows the
occasionalist system of Malebranche. In the latter’s system there is a psycho-
physical parallelism in which bodies are moved not by the human will but by
God. Malebranche, a priest arguing against the mechanistic worldviews of the
1600s, was doubtless not imitating the Muslims; it is simply that in both cases,
the type of argument serves to make God omnipresent even within a world
which philosophical argument has concluded consists of material substances. - By the late 900s, the AshÀarites denied that there are unchanging essences
and eternal laws (Wolfson, 1976: 543–544; Fakhry, 1983: 210–212). Moving
to the opposite pole from the Neoplatonists, now on the scene among the
falasifa, they held that facts are concrete and particular. Al-Baqillani’s version
of atomic instants held that every particular event is produced by the will of
God; God may make a sequence of repetitive events, but there are no natural
laws, no necessity of repetition. Here the argument foreshadows Hume’s denial
of causality, and paves the way for al-Ghazali’s anti-causal argument in the
AshÀarite lineage three generations later. Al-Baqillani also held that bodies in
themselves can have any sort of qualities; that they have one particular form
rather than another requires a determinant, which implies the existence of God.
This also makes explicit the notion of contingency, which was to be stressed
by Ibn Sina and by al-Juwayni. - The MuÀtazilites and AshÀarites worked out a series of proofs of theo-
logical positions: for the existence of God; for God’s unity; for the creation of
the world ex nihilo; against the Aristotelean preexistence of matter and eternity
of the world. Abu-Àl-Hudhayl, in the early 800s generation, produced an
argument for the creation of the world that was to be characteristic of kalam:
all accidents are generated; all bodies have accidents (including the accident of
being composite); hence the world as a body must be generated (Davidson,
1987: 134–136). About the same time al-Nazzam held that an infinite cannot
be traversed, and that one infinite cannot be greater than another infinite; these
points imply the finiteness of the world in time (Wolfson, 1976: 416–417).
Saadia summarized related MuÀtazilite arguments for creation, such as the
argument that if past time were infinite, then the original cause of existence
could never reach me; since I exist, there must be a temporal beginning (Hyman
and Walsh, 1983: 348). The procedure of kalam was to prove the creation
first, then use this as basis for the proof of a creator. The Jewish academies
came alive in this period through factional arguments between Karaites and
Rabbanites, paralleling kalam and hadith; they were similarly concerned with
reasoned critique or defense of anthropomorphic images in holy scripture. Such
proofs became one of the staples of Jewish philosophy leading up to Mai-
monides.^15
These issues, more than anything else, propelled Islamic philosophy in the
Tensions of Ideas: Islam, Judaism, Christendom^ •^413