Armenianism and Adventism: Free Will  in Greek, Jewish and Islamic Philosophies I

 

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint Lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

19 December 2010

 

God chose Adventism in point in time to carry forward a corpus of conclusions that are the results from majorly borrowed hermeneutical principles already known for millennia added with some surplus ideas of their own.

When we are talking about prophetic interpretation we will have some things new and special but when we are dealing with aspects of the Free Will and God's Sovereignity, these ideas have been with us for a long time. Much of what is presented below did not fall out of clean skies but are thanks to my teacher in Judaism, Rabbi dr. Izak A. ben-Yosef in 1981.

 

Plato

Plato was born in Athens in 427 BCE. When he was 20 he met Socrates and spent 8 years together with him since Socrates died in 399 BCE. Plato then travelled Egypt, Italy and Sicily and this influenced his concepts as well. Plato did not produce any systematic exposition of his ideas.

Regarding the Free Will of man, Plato had the idea that the freedom of man is essential. Man is able to conquer the universe though he is a creature like all the others. He may order his life to live justly or wisely or neither. Plato also insisted upon freedom as a necessary basis of all good life. Without freedom there is no choice, no justification for evil and goodness. Goodness comes when man meets and defeats evil. Man is not determined by the universe but is able to decide his own fate.

 

Aristotle

Aristotle was born in the year 385 BCE on the north eastern coast of Greece. He was Ionian and not Athenian. He came under his master Plato until Plato's death in 347 BCE. He attempted to systematize the accepted knowledge of his day.

On the issue of the Free Will, Aristotle understood that man enjoys freedom. Morality is a matter of free choice. He wrote "Virtue as well as evil lies in our power". We are free and there is no power in the universe forcing our human deeds. For Aristotle the supreme end of man is to realize his high and best part, namely reason. Man is free to choose the way of reason or to go astray. The ultimate choice lies within the human being. The world ruled by fate cannot be a good world. It would deprive man of his responsibility. Morality demands a free will without which human life is meaningless. Good conduct and ethical life are the result of wisdom and understanding. The bad man or woman, is the one who makes a wrong choice in his/her life. Man's actions may also change within the framework of his universal lot.

 

Zeno and Stoicism

Zeno (340-265 BCE) founded the school of Stoicism. It is interesting that the end of Zeno's life is the beginning of the Library at Alexandria in Egypt. It is also the period of the translation of the LXX into Greek.

Regarding the Free Will of man, the Stoics felt that the order of the universe is fixed and unchanging. The law of the world-soul is an eternal law. Everything in it, in the world, is determined with absoluteness that permits no freedom, and even man's will is determined. Nothing can happen by chance. From the first beginning to its end, there is an unbroken chain of events determined by the nature of the universe. Man has no freedom of will in any true sense. He is part of this causal chain and all his actions are results of factors over which he has no control. It is possible for man to obey graciously or ungraciously, but in either case we must obey. His only freedom is to accept the fate and to submit to what fate decrees for humans. Stoics concluded that since everything is part of a rational order, everything is justified, also an immutable destiny designed to each one of us. We should therefore accept our lot and do what we must, patiently, quietly and uncomplainingly. Since an evil world is beyond our control, we must learn to live with disappointment, frustration and evil.

When the Stoics deal with the problem of good life, they tend to abandon or to relax the complete determinism of their metaphysics and allow free choice in human conduct. In their ethics they teach that man may determine for himself in his limited sphere of life, how to obey the moral laws. Humans may give themselves to their passions and become their slave, or they may escape them and rise to a moral life. If man conquers his passions he becomes free. For the Stoics, this is "true freedom". In the concept of the universe, cause and effect reign supreme, but in their theory of human life, choice is possible.

 

Neo-Platonism

Neo-Platonism derived much of its teaching from Plato but radically transformed his doctrines to the influence of Eastern religions and Gnosticism. It was a metamorphosis called neo-Platonism and took place in Alexandria as part of Hellenistic philosophy. Gnosticism is a fusion of religious and philosophical ideas of many sources. It borrowed from mystery religions as well. Regarding the Free Will of man, Gnosticism felt that man is in bondage under heavenly powers. In man there is a spark, a seed that came from the divine world from which all souls originated.

Gnosticism influenced Plotinus who is the father of Neo-Platonism. Plotinus was born in 204 CE and died in 270 CE. He died in Rome. Plotinus is Platonic but is influenced by Oriental religions and Gnosticism. Nearly all his writings belongs to the last 16 years of his life.

Regarding the Free Will of man Plotinus felt that the soul is originally free. Because of the soul, man has a free choice and may reach outside the prison of the body. In Neo-Platonism the soul has the ability to liberate itself through its own will, or through study. There is no compulsion nor inescapable law. In this particular regard, Neo-Platonism deviates from Stoicism and comes closer to Platonism. Humans are free to sell their souls to the sensual or to the spiritual. Plotinus never doubted that "god" was perfect freedom, and so far as man is god-like, he is able to reach this freedom. However, the soul is influenced by the body, and it must battle through life to gain freedom/god.

 

Aristotelianism

Aristotelianism is a philosophical school influenced by the philosophy of Aristotle which is not originally his. It is a stream in European philosophy which has developed down the ages. All these streams fused Aristotle into their own religious paradigms. That is why we speak of Islamic Aristotelianism, Christian Aristotelianism and Jewish Aristotelianism. "Aristotle was not Aristotelian."

Aristotles system is a purely worldly (secular) system. Christians, Islam and Jews have added a salvation aspect to his system. There is no such conception of man's vocation in Aristotle's writings. For Aristotle, the purpose of philosophic activity was to seek truth and to reach a "good life" of wisdom, but not to seek refuge from this world or to seek for "another world". The Middle Ages inverted the philosophy of Aristotle. With the rise of Christianity and Islam, Aristotelianism became one of the philosophical schools in the service of religion. This system was to justify God's actions towards men and man's attitude to God in way foreign to Aristotle who had no conception of an authoritative theology or the use of his logical apparatus for theological discourses. Aristotle himself did not consider that the purposeful, teleological direction of reality has a theological or supernatural meaning, e. g. for him the purpose of the organ is its biological, physiological function.

Jewish Aristotelians were Maimonides, Albalag, Caspi and Narbonne (Katz, 74).

The issue of the problem of divine providence in Islamic Aristotelianism and Jewish Aristotelianism was dealt with by (Katz, 75 and Guttmann, 170). Katz also discussed the issue of divine foreknowledge and the Free Will.

A number of issues stood in stark contrast to the revealed religion if it is compared to Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism. Some of the religions are socalled revealed religions since they just claim revelation, but are not in fact so. They are a) concerning the image of God (Guttmann, 138-139); b) concerning the concept of man (Guttmann, 139); c) concerning the immortality of the soul (Guttmann, 139); d) concerning the contact between man and God (Guttmann, 139); e) concerning the orderly teleology of the universe (Guttmann, 139, 140, 173).

 

Islamic or Arabic thought

There are two streams of Islamic or Arabic thought. The first is occupied with Islamic religious issues and is therefore characterized as "theology". The second stream is influenced by Greek philosophy and is therefore considered Islamic "philosophy". The theological stream is represented primarily in two groups, the Kalam and the Mutazilla. In reality, the Mutazilla is a split group from the Kalam, which is the theological school in Islam.

 

Kalam (Theology)

Kalam developed from the study of the Qur`an. Kalam is a shortened term for Kalam Allah. Kalam as a theological school deals primarily with two major issues:

The divine attributes of Allah and secondly, with the Qur`an. One of the major issues in Kalam is the unity against the plurality of God's attributes. Connected to their concepts are the ideas whether the Qur`an was created or revealed. Whether man is free to choose and the issue of theodicy depends on whether the Qur`an is seen as created or revealed. The reasoning of all these issues is Kalam. It is in the 8th century, after the death of their prophet, through the challenges and influence of Islamic and other religious ideas, as well as within the Islamic community that fundamental moral issues were discussed. Kalam at this time had to deal with the issue of the Free Will, God's Omnipotence and justice and His relations to the world. The aim is to retain the theocentric element in Islam and to avoid any anthropomorphisms concerning the image of God. The more progressive current in Kalam was the Mutazilla which is influenced by Greek and Christian philosophy. The Kalam stressed that the Islamic faith must be spread by tongue (teaching) by hand and by the sword.

 

Mutaliza (theology)

This is a rationalistic and analytic stream within the Kalam. The Mutaliza and Kalam were rivals for a long time. It is an intermediate view between complete naive faith in God and scepticism. It does not accept the mystical approach to God by Kalam, by which there is no possibility of inquiry concerning his attributes.

 

Islamic Philosophy

The work of these Arabic philosophers were preceded by translations of the Greek philosophical writings into Arabic around 800 CE. The king of Bagdad ordered it at that time. Translations were mostly from Syriac to Arabic. About 900 CE they developed their own philosophy. The first philosopher was Al Farrahbi who died in 950. The main characteristics of Islamic philosophy is the two streams in Greek philosophy, namely, Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism. Muslim philosophy accepted the general cosmological picture that they had inherited from the Greek tradition (Guttmann, 83-84). An important place in their cosmology and metaphysics is the role of the stars and heavenly bodies (a role that had no place in the worldview of the Qur`an). One common element in Islam Philosophy is their view that there is no conflict between philosophy and religion, the rational truth and the revealed truth. The two are supporting each other and are in fact seen as identical at times. This element is also very strong in Seventh-day Adventism. There cannot be any disharmony between the Bible and Science, thus Creationism is the only option.

Islamic orthodoxy was always opposed to Islamic philosophy and that is why Islamic philosophy is always apologetic. Arabic thought became influential in the Middle Ages in Europe and influenced Jews and Christians as well. Other Islamic philosophers were Al-Ghazali, Avemipace, Averroes, Avicenna, Hibat Allah, Tabrizi (Katz, 266-274).

 

Sources:

1. Guttmann, J. Philosophies of Judaism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964).

2. Katz, S. T. Jewish Philosophers (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975).

3. Unisa Judaica II, Guide 5 Section B: 37-142.