The argument about an uncreated vs. created Quran is almost a carbon copy of the Trinitarian vs. Arian argument over whether Jesus is the uncreated Son, existing “of the same substance as the Father” from before the foundation of the world, or merely the first of all God’s creation, through whom the rest of creation came to be.
That argument was settled almost universally in favor of Trinitarianism centuries before Muhammad. I wonder if that influenced the Muslims’ decision on how they should view the Quran?
Historians have made that same argument. The interesting part is the timing. The question wasn't settled in Muhammad's lifetime or anywhere close to it. It came to a head in Baghdad two centuries later, when the ruler there made the created-Quran position official in 833 and had scholars jailed and flogged for refusing to affirm it. The policy got reversed about twenty years after that, and the uncreated side won.
That fight happened in a city where Greek philosophy was being translated wholesale and Christian theologians worked at court as physicians and secretaries. A Christian writer in Damascus had already been pressing Muslims on the point a century earlier: you call the Quran the Word of God, so is that Word created or not?
I'd stop short of calling it borrowing. The Muslim debate had its own engine, the question of whether speech counts as one of God's eternal attributes, and that comes straight out of Islamic premises. What the Christian environment supplied was the vocabulary and the shape of the argument. Muslim critics of the uncreated position noticed the resemblance themselves and accused their opponents of repeating the Christian mistake of setting a second eternal thing beside God.
The argument about an uncreated vs. created Quran is almost a carbon copy of the Trinitarian vs. Arian argument over whether Jesus is the uncreated Son, existing “of the same substance as the Father” from before the foundation of the world, or merely the first of all God’s creation, through whom the rest of creation came to be.
That argument was settled almost universally in favor of Trinitarianism centuries before Muhammad. I wonder if that influenced the Muslims’ decision on how they should view the Quran?
Hi Troy,
Historians have made that same argument. The interesting part is the timing. The question wasn't settled in Muhammad's lifetime or anywhere close to it. It came to a head in Baghdad two centuries later, when the ruler there made the created-Quran position official in 833 and had scholars jailed and flogged for refusing to affirm it. The policy got reversed about twenty years after that, and the uncreated side won.
That fight happened in a city where Greek philosophy was being translated wholesale and Christian theologians worked at court as physicians and secretaries. A Christian writer in Damascus had already been pressing Muslims on the point a century earlier: you call the Quran the Word of God, so is that Word created or not?
I'd stop short of calling it borrowing. The Muslim debate had its own engine, the question of whether speech counts as one of God's eternal attributes, and that comes straight out of Islamic premises. What the Christian environment supplied was the vocabulary and the shape of the argument. Muslim critics of the uncreated position noticed the resemblance themselves and accused their opponents of repeating the Christian mistake of setting a second eternal thing beside God.