ABSTRACT
The Averroist-Ash‘arite controversy recounted above can be described as an attempt to solve the problem of divine versus natural causality from two antithetical standpoints. Neither the deistic determinism of Averroës nor the theistic occasionalism of al-Ghazālī and the Ash‘arites, however, can do complete justice to the radical question of divine versus natural causality. And yet, in a sense, both determinism and occasionalism are indispensable for any adequate conception of the Deity and His role in the universe. It is only the extreme claims with which they are loaded which renders them metaphysically and theologically suspect. From the standpoint of abstract, critical theology, it is imperative that God should be endowed with the attribute of infinite power. But this infinite power must be such as to be independent of any conditions inhering in the created order. For God's infinite power, being disproportionate with the created order, has unlimited scope vis-À-vis that order. Accordingly God's extraordinary intervention in the cosmic sphere is rationally possible because God's power can never be circumscribed by the conditions of concrete existence. Nor can the mode of this intervention be determined by the laws of cosmic becoming, because the mode of operation of His infinite power, instead of being determined by these laws, is their primary determinant. In this determination we have the clue to the definition of volitional activity, as activity which is rooted in the spontaneous determination of a free agent. Thus the infinity of God's power, the voluntary mode of His activity, and the possibility of His extraordinary intervention in the course of cosmic events are rational desiderata of any adequate conception of God's sovereign perfection and His role in the universe. And here al-Ghazālī's theological reasoning is sound in principle, despite its flimsy metaphysical drapery.
