The god of mystics, ch 7, a history of god

Pesonal god in all religion

It became a dangerous liability

Personal god to impersonal god transition - god of mystics

Historical monotheism not mystical - God's will on earth

Throne mysticism - rabbi Akiva, Rabbi. Ishmael and Rabbi Yohannan - mystical ascent to god's throne - visions 7 heaven

Shiur Qomah - describes figure of god seen by Ezekiel

Sefer Yezirah - book of creation - symbolic account

Prophet Mohammed night journey and journey through 7 heavens

St:Augustine's ascent to God with his mother

Mystical experience of god in all religion has certain common characteristics - deliberate creation not unawares

Pope Gregory(604) disagreed to vision of god

Western Christian concept

Eastern Christian concept

Icons ans iconoclasts

Sufism

Al bistami

Al Junayd

Al hallaj

Al ghazalli

suhrawardi

Al Arabi

Rumi - masnawi

Ashkenazi - Jew mystics

Kabbalah - Jew mystics in Muslim world

-en sof and 10 sefiroth

Abulaifa - kabbalist

(not exhaustive notes)

A history of god, ch 6: The god of the philosophers

9th century Arab came to contact with Greek science and philosophy

Nestorian Christians translated Greek text to Arabic

More scientific discoveries in abbaside empire

Falsfah - broader and richer meaning than philosophy

-god of Greek philosophers identical to Allah

-rationalism advanced form of religion

faylasufs, good Muslims, believed in god, wanted to prove rationally

-wanted a universal religion, where god itself was reason

-scientific revolution demands rational explanation in everything including god

-wanted to find general laws than based on concrete events in history

Prophetic philosophy - based on revelation and science

Had influence from Persian, Indian and Gnostic - not just Greek and Arab

Al-kindi(died 870) - inspired knowledge of prophets superior to human insights of philosophers, unmoved mover doing ex-nihilo

Abubakr ar-Razi(died 930) - creatio by demiurge and beleived in emanation

ar-Razi-2, what abt common people, hard to understand philosophy, against egalitarian spirit

Al-Farabi(died 980) - Turkish - dealt with problem uneducated mass - Renaissance man - like in Plato's Republic Prophet was kind of ruler he envisaged and expressed timeless truth - Shia carry out this with wise imam

-10 successive emanation - last has man body from earth and soul and intellect partakes divine reason

-esoteric tradition similar ro dogma

Ismaili,fatimides or seveners vs twelvers

- imams, light of muhammed

Batinis - 10 emanation, each sphere presided by starting from 1 muhammed, Ali, 7 imams and fatimah

Tawil - inner meaning of Koran

al-Sijistani(died.971) - ismaili - talk abt god in negative - eg: not ignorant

Brethren of purity - offshoot of ismaili - 'he who knows himself, knows his god' - unity of truth - emanation - return to the One by purifying rational powers

Ibn-Sina(d.1037) - decline of caliphate - neoplatonism - belief of ordinary people - demonstratio of God's proof - primal unity - necessary being - emation 10 phases - 10th Gabriel - oriental philosophy

Jew philosophers

-Saadia ben Joseph 942

-Solomon ibn Gabriol 1070

-Bahya ibn Pakudah 1080

Al-Ghazzali(1111) - the incoherence of philosophers - distress - Sufism

His influence

-Joseph ibn sadiq(1143)

-Halevi(1141)

Ibn-Rushd(1198) - truths essential to salvation

Maimonides(1294) - disciple of Rushd

Crusading religion of western chistendom

Christian theology in this period

Thomas Aquinas(1274) - uses Aristotle and Ibn-Sina