Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One: Worship, Religious Epistemology and Theological Jurisprudence

Ibn Taymiyya as a Theological Jurist

The Centrality of Worshipping God Alone

The Correspondence of Reason and Revelation

On Knowing that God Exists and that He Alone should be Worshipped

The Methodology of Theological Jurisprudence

The Apologetic Quality of Ibn Taymiyya's Theological Jurisprudence

Chapter Two: God's Wise Purpose, Perpetual Activity and Self-Suffi ciency

The Problematic of God's Goodness and God's Self-Suffi ciency

Joseph Bell on God's Wise Purpose and Self-Suffi ciency in Ibn Taymiyya's Theology

Ibn Taymiyya's Classification of Views on Wise Purpose/ Causality in the Will of God

The Ash'arï Case against Causality in the Will of God: It Entails Imperfection and Origination in God, as well as an Infi nite Regress

Ibn Taymiyya's Case for a God Who Acts Perpetually for Wise Purposes and Creates from Eternity

Ibn Taymiyya on God's Voluntary Acts Subsisting in God's Essence

Ibn Taymiyya on God's Suffi ciency apart from the Worlds in the Exercise of Wise Purpose

Conclusion

Chapter Three: God's Creation and God's Command

Ibn Taymiyya's Creation/Command Hermeneutic

Ibn Taymiyya's Classifi cation of Errors in Creation and Command

Ibn Taymiyya: Analogy Is the Cause of Error in Creation and Command

Modes of Expressing Creation and Command in Ibn Taymiyya's Thought

Ibn Taymiyya Defending the Coherence of Creation and Command

Conclusion

Chapter Four: God's Creation of Acts in the Human Agent

Ibn Taymiyya's View of the Human Act in Prior Research

The Theological and Philosophical Context

Ibn Taymiyya on the Compatibility of Divine Creation and Human Action

Ibn Taymiyya's View of Divine Creation by Means of Secondary Causes

Ibn Taymiyya on Controversial Kaläm Terms Relating to Human Agency

Ibn Taymiyya's Compatibilism as the Golden Mean (wasat)

Conclusion

Chapter Five: The Wise Purpose and Origin of Evil

Ibn Taymiyya and the Explanation of Evil in Islamic Theodicies

Ibn Taymiyya's Evil Attribution Typology

Ibn Taymiyya on God's Wise Purposes in the Creation of Evil

Ibn Taymiyya's Location of the Origin of Evil in Nonexistence ('adam)

Conclusion (Chapter Six: The Justice of God and the Best of All Possible)

Worlds

Introduction

Ibn Taymiyya's Three-fold Typology on God's Justice ('adl)

Ibn Taymiyya on God's Power and al-Ghazälï's Best of All Possible Worlds

Conclusion

Conclusion

Bibliography

Ibn Taymiyya's Writings

Collected Works with Abbreviations

Ibn Taymiyya's Treatises with Short Titles

Works of Others Found in the Collected Works of Ibn Taymiyya

Other Arabic and Western Language Sources

Index