Theologian · Medieval
Al-Ghazali
1058–1111 · Ash'ari theology; Sufism
The “Proof of Islam,” who turned from theology and law to the Sufi way and back; the Muslim thinker nearest to Augustine in temper.
A professor at Baghdad who suffered a crisis of certainty, left his chair, and spent ten years as a Sufi before writing “The Revival of the Religious Sciences.” In “The Incoherence of the Philosophers” he attacked Avicenna's eternal world and necessary emanation and argued that causes are only God's habit (occasionalism); in “Deliverance from Error” he told the story of his own search, which Christians have read beside the Confessions.
Why he matters: He fixed the shape of Sunni orthodoxy and brought mysticism inside it; his critique of the philosophers set the problem Averroes answered and Thomas resolved, and his occasionalism is the pure form of the voluntarism the Church rejects.
Where to be careful
Occasionalism denies real secondary causes; divine-command ethics makes the good depend on will alone; predestination leaves no freedom. The Church holds that God works through real causes, that His will is bound to His own goodness, and that man is free.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.