ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209), the foremost representative of the mature Ashʿarī school, whose synthesis of theology, philosophy, and science transformed the intellectual landscape of Islam. Al-Rāzī develops a cautious yet confident vision of knowledge that balances rational enquiry with the limits of human understanding. God is the direct cause of all things, acting through habitual regularities that sustain the world's coherence while preserving divine freedom. Al-Rāzī accepts the reality of secondary causes as part of God's customary order, framing occasionalism not as a denial of nature but as its ultimate grounding. He breaks with early Ashʿarī atomism, refusing to treat it as doctrinally binding, and suspends judgement on whether matter is composed of indivisible parts, thereby freeing theology from unnecessary physical commitments. He allows for the possibility of contingent immaterial entities, rejecting his predecessors' insistence that all created things must be material. Chance, in his thought, reflects human epistemic limitation rather than true randomness, since every event occurs within divine knowledge and wisdom. Miracles, defined as breaches of habit, function not as interventions in nature but as divine signs that communicate meaning to human beings against a backdrop of causal regularity. Al-Rāzī's hermeneutics is marked by theological non-commitment, affirming what scripture explicitly states while suspending judgement where it is silent. On human nature, he rejects a purely corporeal definition of man, allows for an immaterial soul created directly by God, and recognises the complexity of moral agency under divine omnipotence. Al-Rāzī's understanding of science aligns with methodological naturalism, allowing empirical enquiry to proceed freely while grounding its regularities in divine habit. His synthesis of scepticism and faith establishes a model in which science and theology coexist without conflict, each pursuing truth within its proper domain.
