Al-Ghazali on Divine Predicates and Their Properties

In Islam, the question of the Divine Attributes has been treated from various perspectives. In the beginning it was viewed primarily as a semantic and metaphysical problem. A later introduction, its logical aspect, however, was its most important side. The translator attempts to treat the problem with this logical aspect predominantly in mind. Limited both by the scope of this work and by the task of bringing this vast material into reasonable compass, he confines himself to the treatment of the problem as it unfolds in Islamic Peripatetic thought, and the Ash’arite school, with Ghazali being the major representative of the latter. He tests the validity of some of Ghazali’s statements in Iqtisad against the former schools and his findings in Plato and Aristotle. Iqtisad is Ghazali’s most sophisticated major work on Kalam. He himself holds Iqtisad in high esteem.