Abstract

The title of this volume is somewhat misleading. Though the author begins his argument with a cursory account of medieval Islamic thought and of dialectical theology or kaläm, his subsequent exposition of the way three medieval thinkers adapted the basic features of kaläm tenets to their own arguments on behalf of God's existence is far less detailed or nuanced than his investigation of the shortcomings in nineteenth and twentieth century Western materialist explanations of the universe grounded in modern mathematics and physics. Similarly misleading are the titles of the two appendices, for these are really detailed critiques of two bodies of literature the author repudiates lest his contention that "the universe had a beginning because an actual infinite cannot be formed by successive addition" be infirmed. Kaläm receives such a prominent billing here only because that contention and the reasoning behind it defended throughout this volume can be derived from the writings of certain authors associated with the movement. In other words, this book is less a scholarly investigation of kaläm doctrines than an attempt to identify a general set of arguments purporting to prove God's existence embraced by some of those who are traditionally called mutakallimün or dialectical theologians and to defend the soundness of those arguments against the skepticism of modern science.