Divine Wisdom, Human Agency and the fiṭra in Ibn Taymiyya’s Thought 59
and perfection.^73 Ibn Taymiyya’s spirituality, however, is more Koran-
ic than a pure mystical one and is followed by his close student Ibn
Qayyim al-Jawziyya, who wrote a book on the love of God (maḥabbat
allāh).^74 In this monograph, Ibn al-Qayyim states that nothing in the
world calms and satisfies the hearts more than divine love.
Conclusion
Theologically, the theory of divine wisdom suggests that purposeful
actions by God endow human nature with the ability or tendency to
believe in God. Ibn Taymiyya, therefore, openly sided with the defend-
ers of wisdom theory and rejected the Ashʿarī point of a possible limita-
tion of divine omnipotence. As discussed above, Ibn Taymiyya did not
hesitate to practice a rational method of theology in this case, despite
his belonging to a more traditionalist circle of aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth in the-
ology and Ḥanbalism in law. Moreover, he connects human agency
to general divine wisdom; the wisdom of God, in his view, actually
requires human free choice. In other words, humans having their own
actions with their own will is not an obstacle to the authority of God,
because humans themselves like other existences are parts of His uni-
versal creation.
Ibn Taymiyya regarded human fiṭra and its ability to believe as a part
of divine wisdom and benevolence, and some Muslim thinkers seem
to have employed it in the modern period. It is interesting that this
idea was also acknowledged by reformist Christian theologians and
has been discussed in the contemporary philosophy of religion. This
theory of fiṭra may raise further questions, especially in connection
with human autonomy and free will;^75 indeed the concept of properly
basic belief, which is defended by the reformed epistemologists, brings
about new debates because it makes the state of believing a necessary
act. Ibn Taymiyya and other Muslim theoreticians of human nature,
too, are not very clear in defining the knowledge acquired by fiṭra as
73 For a summary of Sufi perception and understanding of divine love, see Valiud-
din, Mir: Love of God. The Sufi Approach, Lahore 1979.
74 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad: Maḥabbat allāh ʿazza wa-
jalla, Damascus and Beirut 2002. See also his Rawḍat al-muḥibbīn wa-nuzhat
al-mushtaqīn, edited by Sayyid Jamīlī, Beirut 1987.
75 See, for instance, Hallaq, Wael B.: Ibn Taymiyya on the Existence of God, in:
Acta Orientalia 52 (1991), pp. 52–69, here pp. 58–60.
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