There have been many developments in the field of science and religion over the past few decades. One such development is referred to as ‘theology of nature’ (ToN), which is the activity of building or revising theological frameworks in light of contemporary scientific developments, e.g., evolution, chaos theory, and quantum mechanics. Ian Barbour, John Polkinghorne, and Arthur Peacocke, all of whom are Christian thinkers, are the most well-known advocates of this kind of thinking. However, this discourse has not been examined (...) from an Islamic perspective. Given this gap, in this article, we view this strand of thinking from the Ashʿarī school of thought that is part of the Sunnī Islamic kalām tradition. We first review how ToN manifests in the works of the thinkers mentioned earlier. Following this, we highlight the essential principles in Ashʿarism relevant to God, His interaction with the created world, and science. These are then compared with the ideas of the said thinkers. Two conclusions are reached. First, we demonstrate that atomism, which is generally understood as a long-held position in the Ashʿarī tradition, should not be held as a theological position but rather a philosophical or a scientific one. Second, an important distinction is made between science-informed theology (SIT) and contingency-informed theology (CIT). For Ashʿarīs, a CIT is sufficient for understanding God, but they would find the SIT displayed in ToN problematic. The motivation and methodology of localising or modifying God’s nature or attributes to fit the science of the day would be seen as theologically very costly and a form of scientism. (shrink)

Scholars have widely discussed the paradigm of integration of Islam and science. Still, a model of integration of Islam and science that uses the reasoning of Martabat Tujuh [seven grades] has not been found. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the manuscripts of Shaykh Abdussamad al-Palimbani’s Martabat Tujuh in the integration of Islam and science. This study used a descriptive qualitative approach, and data collection techniques were documentation and interviews. This study found two spiritual reasons in the manuscript of Shaykh (...) Abdussamad al-Palimbani’s Martabat Tujuh: tanazzul [move down] deductive reasoning and taraqqi [move up] inductive reasoning. Contribution: The article contributed to developing the integration of Islam and science in Indonesia. The manuscripts of Martabat Tujuh [seven grades] by Shaykh Abdussamad al-Palimbani offer the circular motion of Martabat Tujuh as a model for integrating knowledge. The circular motion model of Martabat Tujuh is expected to be used as a theoretical basis for applying knowledge integration at various Islamic universities in Indonesia. (shrink)