American Jour f Arai Stasis, AN ISMAMILI ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM OF WORSHIPING THE UNKNOWABLE, NEOPLATONIC GOD Many of the prublems involved in worshiping the remote ineffable and unknowable God ofthe Neoplatonists are well krown and often Hlscussed, Theologians and philosophers are both familiar with radical de-anthopomorphism, with argoments about the nature of absolutes, and with the difculty in feeling affection for something Which is considered to be outside human sense perception. Gener rally those who have proposed such an absolute view of God, as for example to say with the Neoplatonists that He is beyond both ‘knowledge and being, have been regarded almost necessarily 2s mystics at east in theology. Indeed it has been hard to discover & rational and non-mystical yet religiously’ satisfying explanation for ‘ugh a paradox as hamea worship of an unknown Ged. This problem is aot nev, however, and its history is ong and varied. In Islan there have been any numberof thinkers motivated just such considerations. Here the mystical response has, on the whole perhaps, constituted the bist kaown and most. widely ‘mpioyed solution, Various views can be found in the writings of ‘many Sufi masters. Even before the great surge of intelectual Sufism, such as that of al-Ghazzall, however, leading members of the Ismat scetaceepted, along with their own particular version of Islam, a considerable dose of neoplatoni theory as a reinforcement for a dogma whose central proposition was the unknowableness uf God. Within the contest af thee specnlations and those which they Inherited from several sects which precceded them, the Tsma"lis valved both an interesting method of conceiving (or in this ease of not conceiving) the absolute, neoplatonie God, and significantly, ‘unique orientation to the problem of worshiping such a God, Among the early scholars of Tsim, eredit for this develop. ‘ment apparently belongs to the work of Aba Ya‘gib ae-Sijstant (G1 after 361/974), prominent and perhaps most influential theolo- tian-philosopher of the classical period of Isma'Th literature! + apts tira i akmuethopetely obscre Thm mention ty Sunni Rereoraphers the only acertanabe date Gr hf 34) story alter whe he come hi a fh rom internal evsdeae “parental that this work came oar the Cf hs iteray cae, See8 aul 8, WALKER ‘Because his work found favor in the various centers of the Fatimid da'wah, particularly in its Caio headquarters, asSijistint's thought ‘continued to be followed by later generations. Flis works, unlike those of Muhammad an-Nasai, his only slightly less important predecessor, were collected and preserved? They still exist in the Surviving seet Hbraries and from them we can begin to reconstruct hie doctrine on worship with some precision. Tt should be noted at the onset, however, that Tama" thinking vas not totaly dominated by any one philosophical school; and a Sijistin's work, though heavily influenced by neoplatonism, was {Ukewise not bound toits every dagen Therein lay some ofits most curious aspects and the source, a last in part, of ts iqueness the full understanding of which requires an appreciation of the back- {ground to his conception of God and his nation of worship. From the time of Plotinus (2. 270 a..), philosophy was as fully ‘conversant with the theologia! problems in worshiping an un- knowable, ineffable “ultimate ground of existence” as were the proponenis of those various monotheistic sects which had osten- aoc Tanna," ASOAS, XIN), $600, ad Wage, She icuiy Pera, omathon (sen Bl, ont) and Tome Litre 4 iiraphies ue Taian: Toren Union Pe 0) Pr intel Ke wes sod lhe ot aN we W. Yom, Lond Lteatee White thee nothing We excep egmentaryqustatins O at Nite major won a afega wich may have persed beau te nner Hera even witha the saa a ast fen Perhaps ore siaiSiat tng Save survived fort that have be pbb at ets eee trae manage. The ellnng were conten ‘iaence tris stay: isu Naot or anc tthe SSiton Rf Tame (ietrts Cutwoe Brok 900) Tuyat wedfur Fite ed. ‘Ant Tamir Rha esr Tat, Der: Dar at ‘Rost rost uth (Gre Monga, Suna) Som ow Nasa (8 Fede Cheon, Bombay Universty Litrary. Bombay) Riu at Yana {A Hour Coin, lg Tomanieone estas InaatPranco irae, Toot aqua, Library of De Adasen Naat a Ab {yee Caen, Belay Urveity Livy Bombay and aw ‘ova faite sow lyn quotas by ani wie ge as agi ef Tami, beat rath Tagate 98), Tahaan wrk of arty Caen Sut, 6b 0d peta, arid. an aye te only aeen poooper expe ted The aoente of other owever eumhmaleSome Rents steer stunts rachel the ety oes Sst hay nan oem ot {he'Thgy of Arete, an Arte ramon ad pasate of books 1 Vsna'vt the Ennead Sne the surviving cto this week have been {und in sever places Iie Gia eo know what contained iy oe anh fat centary ness. ‘The Imes cin al probably, had he ia Rhee at Mehy (ibe en nad ce serpin text A SMALE ANSWER TO THE NEOHLATOSIC Gog sibly given birth to such conceptions. There is of course an intense controversy a8 t0 the origin of the idea of the unknowable God. Some say it was characteristically eastern and was illustrated most forcefully by the Gnostic mythologies. Others angue that it could have arisen just as well (om Gresk philosophical sources and they cite for example the extremely. subtle musings of Plato i. his Paymenides. Ibis, on the other hand, also possible that it developed independently both in the religions of the Near East and in the thilosophies of the Hellenic world, Tt might be seen, therefore, as a Droduct of their respective concerns with ultimate reality’ and ‘ultimate truth, Nevertheless there i litte doubt that it was Plotinus who raised this eoncept to philosophical respectability. From any number of theories of unity and existence, of the one and the many, and of ‘good and being, he extracted the notion of an absolute, supra- existential unity which, according to him, transcended both Soul guy and Intellect vo. Tt was therefore root and source of all things. Ths god Plotiaus most often described as the One or the Goo “The Good beyond being,” was a phase he adopted fom, ‘Plato’ This hypostast was, for him, not simply an axousion and, hence an unknown god; it was the kyferousion and so the God beyond the realm of knowledge. ‘The One refused all predieation.* interestingly though he himself was litle given to the theurgle religious practices of his later Groek fllowers,Plotinus is remem- bere as the proponent not ony ofa strict and rigorous monothei Dut also ofthe ie that there isan intense deiving fore calling the individual zon to seek and to rise to a union with the One. Indeed there i, i the extreme passion and poetry seth which he desesibes ‘the One, a kind of religious ferver akin to ecstatic worship. It is we name ony to Intra for oor awn ase as best we may. And tis ane designation, a mere aid’ to inquiry, was never intended for more that 3 Pfstiniaryaimation of sbclte snp to be ole bythe rejection [oven thi statment = Potnan The Paes, tans Stephen Mac egal od reise by Page (Laadon: Fate, 2930) P4081 3 8) Tapani jon + OW Frotiou's dctin of te One, sex, nation to te Ennead, the studies of Arter He Armstrong, The Archunare of te Tug Unter inthe Phissophy of Platina (Camitcges Univeraty "Pros, 1940) ad Breer ba Plasyptede Pt Cary, ages), sa8 Str,lytical, mystical, and intensely personal. The following passage ere taken from the Arabic version of Ennead, illustrates this point? Often have I been alone with my sou and have ded my body and Ini t aide and become a if I ere naked substance without ody 1 as tobe ide yuh tide al ther things ‘Then do see ‘vthin myself such beauty and splendour as I do remato marveling {and asfonished, so that {Know that Tam one of the part of the Slime, surpassing, lofty, divine word, and. poe active te When Tam certain that 1H my intellect up rom that ‘wold into {hedivine place: And there Tate mich igh and splendour omg annot dessibe nor es temprehend. When at light and spl Sor overwhelm me and have not strength to endure tT dewend tom ind to thought and reflection, When T ener the worl of fought thoaght eis that ight and spends fom me. and an let wondering bow Ihave fallen feat tat lnty and vine place and am come tothe place of thoaght, when my’ soalcnce ad the ower to leave her bay behind snd ctu o hell and se the ‘orld of mind and then to the divioe world uni she entered the ‘ice of splendour and light, wbich b the case ofall ight and {plendour However, in spite of the tone of reverence and awe, of love and passion, for the One which pervades the Evneads, the statements of Plotinus were generally insulficient by themselves for the pure poses of formal regio practice "The complex, threefold. theology of the Pseudo-Dionysius (GL Gitth—early sixth century), a Christianized neoplatonism of the Proclean school was closer to that of the Ismd‘lis. It frst ‘emphasized the symbolie characterization of God and then went on {o reject all sueh symbols as misleading, Unfortunately for modern attempts to tidy the histoncal record, the works of the Pseudo- Dionysius may not have had any direct influence on Ismail theologians as they were apparently not translated into Arabic 2 Uibliins Asti o Abd rtp Badawi (Cac, Mabtabat a ah, 1966) 2, The Enginh version qunted har that of. Lew ‘Piotins Oper, ito, Henry aed Schr (Para 099) p2s9, The Arabic enti ft teint sparen tae ye wel tem meng Mean Tt shoal be ote that within Pinus mys experience ther a8 ‘smphass om a vio ce a visionary grasping ofthe One. In snother pace Ge ane, Mackaya ony tn tp ee {oat by any sound cane bea on any Rea bt at al, ‘osm "rhs atu i im contrast 9 that of me Inter Neopasonits {nth view of mot mat thelogans Ay SMA‘ ANSWER TO THE NEOPLATOSIC GoD tH until the eleventh or twelfth century.* On the other hand the Enneads, known in Arabie asthe Theology of Arial, were widely ‘known feom the middle of the ninth eentury and almost certainly played significant rlein the development of lsmi“li neoplatonism, The case with respect to a5Sijisin!’ssourees may never sem clearer, however, far he like other Isma"li writes, seldom men- tioned other works or other writers asthe origin of his own inspi- rations. For him moreover the matter of Go's absolute unity was of stupceme importance not because neoplatonic theory demanded it but inal ikelthood, because it was the most fundamental tenet of Islam and by his time it had been the comerstone ofa century or ‘more of theological speculation in Arabic. Without a proper under- standing of tewhid (the process of declaring God to be absolutely ‘Single) a Moslem’s perception of God would necessarily Involve some form of shirk (a compromising of God through association) —the ‘most dreaded of all Islamie si Th nearly all his works, as-Sijistant begins by setting his own. views of this problem against those of his antagonists. [n his mind all other approsches—ie., other than histo the problem of tchieving an unblemished notion of lawhid fail because they Contain one kind of impurity or another. They fall into either lashiih (teying to understand God by analogy asd comparison) ton the one hand, or td (denading God af all content by a strict ‘denial of lash) on the other. The former tends to make God tnthropomorphie and the latter renders Hira unsatisfactory for religios conseiousness:? ‘Amongst those who uphold some form of lasAbih, as-Sijstani includes those who attribute to God a jism mahdid (a finite body). ‘These he calls the Aashufya (meaning probably the Sunni traditio alist). There are also, according to him, those who call God a shay? mawsiim (a clasiffable thing). These are the Mulafaliman (most probably scholastic theologians). Finally there were, the philosophers who maintain that God is jawhar mansab (a struc- ‘red substance). All the foregoing are wrong in this doctrine, according to as-Sijistan, because in one way or another they limit theabsolute nature of God." ‘There is a pomiiity that his oetroes were trananit inzetly no Jab f aman Tbe of a MyIn another place he explained his position using a diferent frame of reference. There are, he said, four clases of worshipers: 3) idol worshipers, 2) anthropomorphists, 3) the Al aad, and 4) the Ail a Hagaig.® The frst, idol worshipers, existed almost exelusi- ‘ely outside Islam and were in any ease of litle concern for as- Siitstini. The second apparently included most of those guilty of ‘committing tashbih though here he probably: thought mainly ‘of those who accepted Quranic fahbia literally. The thid group contained (here he is specific) the Mu'taila, the Khawarlj and the ‘Rawafid (apparently the Imami shayiehs). These he seems to have in mind when he speaks of, "... a group of ancients (ie. Greek hilosophers) and a collection of sects in Islam," who, he stys, rnaintain that God is indescribable, indefinable, uncharacteriable, lunsceable, and not ina place These people, he adds, "-.. reckon that this evaluation constitutes a glotfcation of God and an exaltation of Him and that they are (thereby) fee of shirk and tashbih,” # Its clear, nevertheless, that they, lke him, believed aan unknowable God and it was theie position which be found most threatening to his own. “They,” he say, “do not worship God with the correct worship due Him and they are not cognizant of Him in the proper way.” Tt is to the fourth clas of worshipers, the AAl a-Hayig, of cours, that asSijitSel belongs. They are the ones, he says, who alone, “obey the established guides and draw near to God through ‘obedience to the bearers of religious knowledge and thexe with at ‘expertise in it" The substance of his atlack by which he would estoy the position of those he ses as his most threatening oppo- ‘ition and in which he will establish the claims of himself and the “lid a-Bagtig involves tnweiling the correct sway of coming to a proper cognizance of God and therehy achieving a solution to the [problem of right worship. In general he hopes to prove that the ‘methed of the thied clas of worshipers is anthropomorphic and, therefore, little better than that of the second clas. AS he says, 8 tid fa aU Maga. hapa msn wa wae ws Kt man ten wa 8 tary a Moni 1 Toi am yah alia bags badati waao yttohs ebacinatit oaiiat maith ta 06 ISMAIL ANSWER TO THEE SEOMLATONEE Gon 13 Whoever removes from his Creator desriptions deinitions, and characteris falls into @ hidden anthropemerpbsm st as one ‘who describes Him, defines His, and characteries Him fll into ‘bvioas anthropomorphic. His own postion must, therefore, avoid both errors. In general the method of characterising Goal by stating what he is rot, as for example that used by asSijistnt's third class of wore stipes, i the famous ova negativa, part of the negative theology of, so many thinkers. “Whoever wishes to describe the Almighty Creator must remove from Him all atteibutes ..,," suid the Arabic rotinus source, for ecampl. But the via nealiva was widely sed both in elassesl antiquity and in Tslamie times before as-Sijistan, In an appendix to his edition of Proclus's Elements of Theology, E. R. Dols has discussed the unknown God and has given there a wselal clasiieation of the ways in which « god may be said to be tunknown. He says that a god may be unknown in the fllawing ways: (i) because foreign o namcest (i) unknown to mankind in general ving tothe secesary hmitations of human knowledge; i) Unkaowe 19 al'who have not enjoyed «special revelation or ini tiation: (iv) unkown and unknowable ty his sence, but partly Keowee by’ inference fom his works or axagy with ther canes, (2) anknown and unknovrable in his postive charactes, Dut del unl by roan, (akon and wks, scree inant ‘Dropeny speaking koe, being Of these the sixth acems to have hoen a particulse favorite of Plotinusand also of many Islamic Satis Paradoxically all problems of the usknowabilty of God revolve round the difcultyof knowing the unknown and the unknowable Acknowledging God therefore must be connected Logically with Aletermining that He is andjoe what and haw He is. Te would eer tainly seem necessary to prove the existonee of Gud first.” This at tag, p47. 1 lim SEE (Epile de Seentin Divina), ei, daw Alin ‘ind aah (ir, Maitabat a Nahgaly of #8. Quote om the uma of winter, p37. fhe ie ante agment rh, The Eient of Toogy, ed and ans with commentary by E.R. Docs [Oniend Carden Hi rove ely Toba) spyenaie be Pater "CCST Sie, Fane Fath, A Neopatonic Phisnper of the Eanty4 Pant B, WALKER however was not the primary concern of asSijistint although he states in bis al-Magulid that there are four circumstances which Allow a cognizance (marifa) of God. They are the following: () hy direct inspiration (asd); (i fom the obvious order in ereation, ile, by mastering physical sciences; (il) throagh the obvious message of the divine sriptures the understanding of which requires Titerary sciences like lexiography and grammar; and (iv) by hermeneutics (atl), The last of these was, according to bie ‘easiest and most noble Tt shoal be clear that assSijistant offers no new method for knowing the unknowable God. His ways of renching a cognizance of God pre-suppose a god unknown in one of five ways (i-vi) defined hhy Dodds Strangely though perhaps implied in his system the tenio mystica had no formally stated place in asSijistnt's theolony. Despite the foregoing scheme moreover feom which it can be seen that he thought cognivance of God could be reached in several vwayat! he never really concerned himself with a demonstration of how he knows the unknown God to exist. This problem (which really has no logical salution, of course) was, for him, secondary. He ‘was most concerned, not to prove that God exists, but to find the way to a correct appreciation of His postion and rank, In many Ways this isa clear indication that he was more concerned with purifying Islamic worship than with abstract arguments about the “xistence of God. ‘Proper cognizance, the most vital element in as-Siistiat's theology, must begin, asording to him, with a rigorous and com. plete renunciation of all attempts to limit or compromise God's bsoluteness. In this, of course, he agreed with many of his enemies and alko with his Greek neoplatoni forerunners. The diference lies inthe rigor with which he pursued this goal In arguments repeated ia many of his works but expounded! most completely in his al-Magaid, he attacked the doctrine of his antagonists and rivals one by one. At times be tried to refute the views of others; af other times he worked from scriptural sources Tenth Century (Onto: Catendon Pres, 1958), pp 2-2, fora dscssion of fm rs st fs org “Tomuth to ne atements tw som at He tno al four ony AW ISMAIL ANSWER TO THE NEOPLATOSIC GOD 15 Dut alvays striving for a purification of the doctrine of tawhid Basically he argued that the imagination or the ability to ereate ‘nceptons fs consequent to sensation and is produced by it. Even a thing with spiritual substance ean be comprehended only as the result of direct inspiration from outside the human perceptual system, Man’s power to perceive and to understand is limited and, hie is Beholden to something beyond him for direction in matters futside the scape of his powers, Ultimately of course itis God ‘who wil do the guiding. The point, therefore is that all notions and names, ether as language or thought, ace defective unless ‘certified valid in respect to any real beyond that for which and in ‘whieh they were created. Human language is valid when talking, about the human realm but only God can tll humans how totale bout Himself since their language is nsuficient From this position as-Sijistant undertook ta analyse and clarify a numberof terms used by his predecessors hich in is view were defective and theologically false. The following are some examples A. For him God has Quira (power), but not guineah (lore) “This means that God has the absolute power to act, rg, to create the universe from nothing. It does not mean that He has a force which operates on, in, oF by: means of something. This would, coording to as-Sijistan, imply that God is leat than absolutely transcendent. Qudra, for him, is a part of irddah (wil); qranwah isan applicable free ® 1B. He argued that Gots true being or identity (inniyad) is not ‘conceivable or knowable, All that is known of God as for example His command (amr) and Fis goodness (jad). is really known only as, something united with and part of Intellect (al"el)—the seennd, hhypostasis of as-Sjst2n'sncoplatonicscheme.* fra mn pd ae Mgt 7-0, eA a nial a Mag pa Th ho fom whch teem nat to be read od in spite of is Latin equivalent am ad ants, In Abo"Hayyan at-Tawtis af Mugitacat (Caro 929) pp, 38730 ft tampl, the Creator fab endo be Sonya uly amije age SIVREDG (ajay af-esutnate/ a-mang Muba Nab Cat to 45, Georges Vejen; "La Phophs ela tole de Joseph Hin Gal’: “Istiet@hdotrs docile tf tadroie te Meyer ae 943), Fiec and Soke M- Sinan, Prtophie!Termimgyin Arabic wed Pon Tasca eh yay) pp snr6 PAUL E, WALKER . God's uniqueness {fardaniyan) is pure and absolute; He alone is usmoltipiable unity. He is the One which transcends even the Irs nity of all numbering 1D. He is not, as maintained by most philosophers, a eause or & cause of causes, There is no effect, he says, ofan aneaused cause and if God were a cause, there would necessarily be something of which Hee would be the eause.™ E. To say that God ie thing (shay) not lke things, a proposed nny same scholastic theologians, i, according 0 him, false. Such formala applies to Tatellect only 2” [And so the arguments sun through many pages. God clearly was not subject, for aeSifistni, to being described either by the "tiribates of something oF by the characteristics of anything for Which theee are words or on which the intllet might dwell® He, Therefore, must not be thought of as having thingness, lit attributes, place, time, oF even being, He is, in fact, outside both Ding aysiva or halt) and not-being(aysiy) "AsSijatan's process of fansih. femoving, all association from God) was, it-would seem, as rigorously thorough as any Islamic Peat demu 54 kts One hacaeer ions mee and dans outside of awnber,” Ranend, V5, 16, trans, MacKenma, p. 442 WB Sra mate A emcee Ay ISMASRE AssweR 4a THE NEOFLATONIC GOD 17 attempt in the field of tawhid, Thongh God was nevertheless called alstilig,albiy, al-mubl', a-musazewir, alma, ad yas sad to have wil, power, command, and absolute unity, all of these terms denote God in His proper role (and presumably only own rele) as Creator. When used technically they have a sharply restricted meaning and they function only analogical in @wnigue situation, The epistemological basis of this is, f course, a8 cosy in ‘many ways as that ofthe arguments of ax Sijistan’s divas, but he himself seemed satisfied that negation had left nothing positive in the image of God and that, more precisely, God was free of all positive umman conceptions ‘The reaction to this doctrine was one of indignation, It is clear fromas Sijistin’s own polemies that he and his group were attacked for having committed the sin of tai. Indeed, he admitted, the process of negation carried to such a radial extreme was (°K, left unetarfied, Those who stop thore arc guilty of incorrectly ‘understanding God nd worshiping Tim falsely. The problem is, according fo him, that the de-anthropomorpism of Goo is itsef a human conceit, The whole attempt to deny God all human attr Des orto nat describe Him in human terms fails because although ‘the god that remains would not be physieally human, He would still be intellectually human, This i what aeSijstint call “hidden anthropomorphisin" 8 The via negative fails not boeause it is too "igorously pursued bnt becanse the method itsalf is «logical devise-— ‘2 human invention to satisfy human sensibilities. The God of as- ‘Sijstani had to be beyond even this, “The complete proces of verifying God's absolute transcendence, ‘f coming to a corectengnizance of Flim, and therefore of reaching ‘the right form of worship must include two steps according to a=: Sijstant. Fiest there should be a foll and rigorous denial of all, tashbtk. One must specify that God is nota thing, not limited, not Aeseribable, not in a place, notin time, nota being. This should then be followed bya secon denial: negation ofthe first negation. God, % a iistnt may wel aye earned eet fr bis nga thoroughness in ‘ejecting ll conpremising atts of Ca, bt une saps tat tems ke ‘ub which he ontaos to ety ee ham ree tenga detect ie work atibia, ie persia, fx bterlypoeiea. tthe fst tupter of both thin wee aa Wnt of Kull af faba he spcetally ‘edb ba group gaint tcc asi apy." ab Mg p 47,8 PAUL E, WALKER is mit not a thing, not not limited, wot not desribable, mat not in a place, not not in time, not not a being. This method of two-fold ‘gation was, according to him, the only answer to the charge of having committed ‘aiid, and it was at the same time the solution to his major theological problom. It provided a formula by which the theologian could really say nothing about God—postive or negative, Ost he says, ‘There doesnot exist lant more brilliant and more splendid than that by which we etabish the absolute transcendence of out Crestor through the use of thse phases in which a negative and a negative of negative apply to the thing denied [AsSijstan's method does in fact seem almost wnigue in Islamic theology, but though nove, itiscertainly not clear immestiately that it avoids all the sins its author wished to avoid. The opposition, he himself admits, might argue, for example, that the statements “God is not describable” and "God is mat not describable” are mutually contradictory. fone is tru, the other must be false since itis the negation of a true statement % According to asSijistnt, however, these paired statements are not mutually contradictory because they are both species of the negative; and, he adds help- fully, the ffst negative strips God of association with the physical and the second removes Him from any association with the spi tal? God is thus nether within the sensible nor within the intel ligble. The negation of the negated is, for him, actually the absolute Aisassciation of God from intligibilty. God can not be A and Gost ‘an not be (not AI-—the item (not A] being an intelligible despite its Soubtful ontologieal status. It should be clear therefore that the ormula “God is nn not describable” alone ix just as inadequate as simple negation without a second, “There was another capital nbjeetion which as-Sijistint found Important enough to both state and cefute* Alshough the method of the tworfold negative might purify the process of Famed and free ‘whatever human worship there woold be from the sin of shi, it nevertheless fails to asert that Gad is absolutely certain (dif, = a layee maujad an tanthen and we asrefa mid scab bi mutdond Bi hathnetcftetat nangaatt PAE annie fn ot epee Apna ah Sid par AoC ISMA'ILL ANSWER TO THE NEOPLATONIE GoD 39 i.e, that God Himself is undenied and undeniable, For ax Siistin God is more certain than everything certain (athdatu in hal ‘hatitin). “Detractors suppose,” he says, “that what has no defini- ‘in (hada) and has nono definition ie not certain habit since there ‘is novertainty thab] tot in any way. Therefore we need to make it clear to them that the truely esttifying [alihbdt al haya), is precisely what has no definition nd no no definition.” Both what has no definition and shat has nano definition are certified (provi- ded with a certainty). They are certain figuratively not truly since they ae things contingent to some kind of certfieation (or here perhaps definition isa better word). God, for as-Sijistin, is beyond ‘the process of certification; He transcends certainty.©" Tt is important to note here that the process of reaching the correct engnizance of the truly absolute God is itself an act of Worship. Correct appreciation of God is the prime element of ‘worship. Without it the object of worship would be a false god. Cariously, however, whereas Plotinus admits to ecstacy and an Intense fling of awe upon reaching this awareness of the truly absolute, asSijistnt seems quite content with form alone. His, theology was notin this sense “mystica.” Te seems quite confident in the power of reason and lagi in the proper place and he docs not ask for some kind of supralogical knowledge. His God is not simply, ‘ficult to know, but rather x geninely un know, Telamic worship wat almost always formal and ritualistic. To some theologians the repetition of seriptures and the names of God. {a8 4 part of worship was onerous in those eases where the sacred text contained words which implied an unacceptable compromising ‘of Gots absolute transcendence, They consequently rejected the ‘use of many of the scriptural attributes of God. As-Sijistinl went ‘even further. That Gol should be propeey wndesstood solely fromm the uninspected symbols of religion, eg. from Quranic phrases, ten a meen me 1 a at Bala phy ‘a nare-stoaie "hag we la bad ah ww 818 adda Tae (a Moai Go, Oren hey seed tht God nde Dt or ‘wah Maga pp vty. Thin argument sams to bea pai ofthe com tingency.aiguane concrning Coe existence Tom Sina Tor example Spr Se Gad ar najih'wmped fecesmry of este, Tek notworthy Tata Sjscent once ter the hoe jer mgjibinhosogy.‘vas, for him, an impossibility; but unlike the theologians of so Imany sects who attempted a compromise between the literal fand the figurative in scripture, asSijstin, like other Isma'lis, rejected even this. For them all scripture as a double mearing—an ‘xoteric (ar-sihir) and an esoteric (al-bdfn). In the sphere of the former (and to those for whom the later is unavailable), worship is literal and symbolic. An Temi‘ however is privy to a hidden, thoterie truth in addition, As he worshipe with exoteric symbols tnd formulae, in conformity with Islamic law, he takes cognizance of the true deity-—the remote, awesome, unknowable, ineffable ‘acoplatonie One, tripped, both physically and spiritually, ofall attributes and of all description and limit. This is, for them, the ‘eal God behind the symbolstand beyond al illusions. In sun it seems that as-Sijstnt was well aware of some of the Aificuties and advantages of the position he held. Most likely he had arrived there by atalysing problems at least in part derived from a previous tradition of Islamic theology. His motive in res triting worship of God by an ansterely absolute conception of His transcendence was probably born of his Islamic background. 1 was, fon the other hand a neoplatorie explanation of God's unknowa- bility that provided him with «rational scence by whieh he could ocument his findings. The basic concept and the proofs of God's nknowableness were Greek. The dyperousis, according to the Pseudo-Dionysius for example, could not be the object of know ledge God, Pltinus fad sid s seen by the soul as nothing: He is “another thing which is above all images and species.” # Tt i not clear however that as Sijstn's doctrine of twosfld negation did in {act derive from some previous usage. While his conception of Goel ‘was that of Plotnus, the application of his own method of taht ‘may well have been orginal with him, Unwilling to abandon the * Om the negative thelgy of ne Pselo-Dinysan ace The Cambie iso of La tak and rly Medical Picsapy et Abate ‘tong (Ciba Univer Pr, 167), pp aan enue, Armctrng: atch este cl Boand, V 5, 3 “Theunly way sto aheeyery nial and no serio (aeRenta 484) Tags ye time” says Tob pony "ca mathe be apps fr enprese by Ut iw ax trp langage,” quate by Same! Sa utsgy i Payal orto Late Agu (Sew Vor Has Bonk, Driyer*The Fiettanse Hse very ve mang tft hay ama Bir id ar feabman Raw, Neots apd raids (aio, Make snub 195 AS ISMAIL ANSWER TO THE NEOPLACDNIC GoD ar rneoplatonic God, so reasonable to him, he came up with an inge- niows solution which, in his own mind atleast, allowed him to zetain his theological postion yet avoid those errors so offensive to his, fnemies and the community at large. Pawn E, Waawer Smitisonian Institution ‘Washington, D.C.