United States or Jamaica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In fact they are ignorant persons, and do not know what logic is and how it is to be used. Before giving our own views of the nature and existence of God, we must refute the objectionable doctrines of these people. Joseph al-Basir in a work of his called "Mansuri" casts it up to the Rabbanites that in believing that God descends and ascends they are not true worshippers of God.
He takes pains to show the absurdity of the view that the divine will is a momentary entity created from time to time to make possible the coming into being of the things and processes of our world a view held by the Mutakallimun as represented by their spokesman al-Basir, but when it comes to explaining his own view of the nature of the divine will, and whether it is identical with God or not, he suddenly becomes reticent, refers us to the writings of Empedocles, and intimates that the matter is involved in mystery, and it is not safe to talk about it too plainly and openly.
Unlike Saadia, who tacitly accepts some of their methods and views, al-Basir is an avowed follower of the Kalam and treats only of those questions which are common to Jew and Mohammedan, avoiding, for example, so important an issue as whether it is possible that the law of God may be abrogated a question which meant so much to Saadia.
Al-Basir has no doubt man is free. Our own consciousness testifies to this. When we cut off our finger bitten by a snake, we know that we ourselves did it for a purpose, and distinguish it from a case of our finger being cut off by order of an official, before whom we have been accused or maligned.
The same considerations which prompted us to conceive God as one and simple, make impossible the belief in the eternity of God's word. This was a point much discussed in the Mohammedan schools, and was evidently directed against Christianity, where the Word or Logos was identified with the second person in the Trinity. Eternity, Al-Basir says, is incompatible with the idea and purpose of speech.
As in his philosophical discussions he is a follower of the Kalam, so in his legalistic works he is indebted to the Mohammedan schools of religious law. Like Al-Basir, Jeshua ben Judah regards as the corner stone of his religious philosophy the proof that the world was created, i. e., that it is not eternal. His arguments are in essence the same, though differently formulated.
The philosopher is right when he says that it is more proper to apply negative attributes to God than positive. Taking a glance at Ibn Zaddik's theology just discussed in its essential outlines, we notice that while he opposes vigorously certain aspects of Kalamistic thought, as he found them in al-Basir, the Karaite, his own method and doctrine are not far removed from the Kalam.
God causes the seed to grow without being in contact with it. Hence he is not body, and the scriptural passages apparently teaching the contrary must be explained otherwise. Jeshua ben Judah likewise agrees with Al-Basir in regarding the nature of good and evil as absolute, not relative.
Among other arguments in favor of the absolute character of right and wrong, which we have already found in Al-Basir, appears the following. If good and evil mean simply that which God commands and prohibits respectively, and the distinction holds only for us but not for God, it follows that God may do what we think is evil.
If the sinner repents of his evil deeds, it is the duty of God to accept his repentance and remit his punishment. Jeshua ben Judah Jeshua ben Judah or, as he is known by his Arabic name, Abu al-Faraj Furkan ibn Asad, was likewise a Karaite, a pupil of Joseph Al-Basir, and flourished in Palestine in the second half of the eleventh century.
Word Of The Day