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A Spiritual Witness
Imam al-Tahawi's Gift of Simplicity
Hamza Yusuf
Theology i s a reaction, a creative response to tension in the mind of a believer who is confronted with propositions that challenge not his experiential faith but his intellectual understanding of it. Experience of faith and expression of faith are distinct yet bound in a way that is often lost in discursive theology. Language cannot express the reality of faith, but it can explain what one believes and why. This is, of course, the central purpose of theology. However, it is also a mental activity by nature and often involves paradoxes, in which seemingly insoluble problems, such as free will and predestination, are dialectically entertained in the mind of the theologian, who then attempts to reconcile them, using sacred scripture and intellect—a combination made volatile and dangerous in the absence of a devout piety that would otherwise illuminate both the effort and the outcome. For this reason, true theology is, to a certain degree, the squaring of a circle within an enlightened mind. Indeed, the true theologian, like Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali (d. 505/1111), is one who experiences the content of his theology. The experience, moreover, cannot be reduced to the intellectual because it is essentially rooted in a spiritual witnessing of reality: Say, “This is my way; I invite to God with inner vision; I and whoever follows me. And, glory be to God, I am not a polytheist” (Qur’an 12:108).
Purchase: Seasons Vol. 4, No. 1 | Autumn 2007
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