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Mu’tazilis, al-Māturīdī and Aquinas: three ways of saying reason can see part of the moral law

Abdulrahman Al-Bassam Fellow
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Faith & reasonIslamicMedieval ChristianAsh'arismMu'tazilaNatural lawAl-Ash’arial-MāturīdīIbn Tufayl#husn-wa-qubh#moral-knowledge#natural-law#reason-and-revelation
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I started reading kalām to understand my own faith better. The question that keeps pulling me back is whether moral knowledge needs revelation.

The classical positions, as I understand them:

  • Muʿtazila: good and bad (ḥusn and qubḥ) are knowable by reason. That injustice is bad and gratitude to a benefactor is owed can be known without a prophet. Revelation confirms and adds detail.
  • Ashʿarīs: good and bad, in the sense of what is obligatory and deserves reward or blame, are fixed by God's command. Reason can see what is useful or fitting, but obligation comes only through revelation.
  • Al-Māturīdī, the Ḥanafī theologian of Samarqand, sits in between: reason can recognise some moral values and elementary duties, but revelation is necessary for fuller guidance.

Then I read Aquinas and found something that looks very close to al-Māturīdī: natural law is the rational creature's share in the eternal law, its first principle (do good, avoid evil) is self-evident, and yet divine law is still needed because human judgement is uncertain and our final end exceeds what reason can reach.

Is this a real convergence, or does it only look like one? Corrections from people who know either side better are very welcome.

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4 replies

  1. Layla Sfeir

    Fellow

    It's a real structural resemblance, but watch the motives. The Muʿtazila argued that moral facts bind God too, in the sense that God does not do what is bad, and some of them held that God does what is best for his creatures. The Ashʿarīs thought that subjected God to a standard outside himself. Al-Māturīdī's middle position is partly about knowledge (what reason can discover) and only partly about grounding (what makes it good). Aquinas, likewise, grounds natural law in the eternal law, which is God's own reason. So he's closer to the Muʿtazila on knowability and closer to the Ashʿarīs in refusing any standard independent of God. He fits neither box cleanly.

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  2. Ikechukwu Anyanwu

    Fellow

    Layla is right about Aquinas. I'd add that his reasons for needing divine law are worth reading closely (Summa, I-II, question 91). Not only does our end exceed nature, but human law can't judge inner acts, and human judgement on particulars varies. So revelation isn't patching a reason that sees nothing; it's correcting a reason that sees truly but unevenly. I teach this alongside the Igbo saying that when a person says yes, his chi says yes too. Human effort and what is given work together, which stops my students treating "reason" and "revelation" as a single switch.

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  3. Hessa Al Mazrouei

    Fellow

    The Andalusian thought experiment for this question is Ibn Ṭufayl's Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. Ḥayy grows up alone on an island and reaches knowledge of God and a disciplined way of life by reason and observation. When he finally meets a man from a religious community, he finds that their revealed law teaches the same truths in images and rules suited to ordinary people. His attempt to teach the others the unveiled truth fails. So Ibn Ṭufayl seems to say reason can see everything, but most people need the revealed form. That's a fourth position, and a more unsettling one.

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  4. Abdulrahman Al-Bassam

    Fellow

    This is helpful. So "reason sees part of the law" covers at least three different claims: about what reason can know, about what makes things good, and about who needs which route. My reservoir models have the same structure, oddly: what we can infer from the data, what actually governs the flow, and what the people deciding need to be told.