Development of the Rational Method in Ashʿarī Kalām (Scholastic Theology): Motives and Features

Abstract

In its framework and approaches, the method associated with scholastic theology (kalām) was closely related to the problems emerging in Muslim intellectual and scholarly circles. The method of Ashꜥarī scholars thus developed as they undertook the task of protecting and defending Islamic doctrine. This method provided a means of reasoning in the context of confronting opponents’ specious arguments, the aim being to persuade skeptics and those obstinately resistant to the truth. This method was also marked by flexibility in the use of certain types of evidence which those involved in drawing inferences might not always adhere to, thus broadening the space allowed for reasoning against opponents. Given early Ashꜥarī theologians' (mutakallimūn) approach to the dialectical method, which relied on the mechanism of analogical rational inference and its branches, they turned unanimously away from Aristotelian logic. The ʿAshʿarī methodological approach was initially the same as that adopted in uṣūl al-fiqh (Islamic legal theory). Eventually, rational analogy‒ as a new and additional mechanism ‒ was included in Ashʿarī kalām for the same reason it had been included in Islamic legal theory. The intellectual framework of later Muslim theologians with dissenting views changed with the spread of philosophy in the Muslim community. This required Ashꜥarī scholars to revive scholastic theological lessons on the functional and methodological level, which in turn prompted them to adopt alternative inferential mechanisms that were consistent with the nature of scholastic theological study at this stage.