Al-Ghazali : Jesus Christ

Al-Ghazali would doubtless have accepted the statement in the Gospel, " No man hath seen God at any time," but he omits " the only Begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." In speaking of the vision of God he says, "All Moslems profess to believe that the Vision of God is the summit of human felicity because it is so stated in the Law ; but with many this is a mere lip-profession which arouses no emotion in their hearts. This is quite natural, for how can a man long for a thing of which he has no knowledge ? We will endeavour to show briefly why the vision of God is the greatest happiness to which a man can attain.

" In the first place, every one of man’s faculties has its appropriate function which it delights to fulfill. This holds good of them all, from the lowest bodily appetite to the highest form of intellectual apprehension. But even a comparatively low form of mental exertion affords greater pleasure than the satisfaction of bodily appetites. Thus if a man happens to be absorbed in a game of chess, he will not come to his meal though repeatedly summoned. And the greater the subject-matter of our knowledge, the greater is our delight in it ; for instance, we would take more pleasure in knowing the secrets of a king than the secrets of a vizier. Seeing then that God is the highest possible object of knowledge, the knowledge of Him must afford more delight than any other. He who knows God, even in this world, dwells, as it were, in a paradise, ’ the breadth of which is as the breadth of the heavens and the earth’ a paradise the fruits of which no envy can prevent him plucking, and the extent of which is not narrowed by the multitude of those who occupy it." (See 1 John 4 : 7-21.)

" But the delight of knowledge still falls short of the delight of vision, just as our pleasure in thinking of those we love is much less than the pleasure afforded by the actual sight of them. Our imprisonment in bodies of clay and water and entanglement in the things of sense constitute a veil which hides the vision of God from us, although it does not prevent our attaining to some knowledge of Him. For this reason God said to Moses on Mount Sinai,’ Thou shalt not see Me.’"

In this book also we are reminded of the statement that only " the pure in heart" can see God, and it seems scarcely possible that what Al-Ghazali here teaches is not based on a knowledge of the Gospel. He says : " He in whose heart the love of God has prevailed over all else will derive more joy from this vision than he in whose heart it has not so prevailed ; just as in the case of two men with equally powerful eyesight gazing on a beautiful face, he who already loves the possessor of that face will rejoice in beholding it more than he who does not. For perfect happiness, mere knowledge is not enough unaccompanied by love, and the love of God cannot take possession of a man’s heart till it is purified from the love of the world, which purification can only be effected by abstinence and austerity." How close is this teaching to the words of Christ, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God " ! It is the vision of God which Al-Ghazali sought through all his religious experiences as the highest good in this world and in the next. Yet with all his efforts to explain the nature of the soul and of God, he still finds himself before a blank wall. He covets the vision of God but cannot shake himself free from the Moslem conception that God is unknowable and that nothing in creation resembles the Creator. As Muhammed Iqbal says : "To this day it is difficult to define with accuracy Al-Ghazali’s view of the nature of God. In him, like Borger and Solger in Germany, Sufi pantheism and the Ash’arite dogma of personality appear to harmonize together, a reconciliation which makes it difficult to say whether he was a Pantheist, or a Personal Pantheist of the type of Lotze. The soul, according to Al-Ghazali, perceives things. But perception as an attribute can exist only in a substance or essence which is absolutely free from all the attributes of body. In his I Al-Madnun, he explains why the prophet declined to reveal the nature of the soul. There are, he says, two kinds of men : ordinary men and thinkers. The former who look upon materiality as a condition of existence, cannot conceive an immaterial substance. The latter are led, by their logic, to a conception of the soul which sweeps away all difference between God and the individual soul. Al-Ghazali, therefore, realized the Pantheist drift of his own inquiry and preferred silence as to the ultimate nature of the soul." ("The Development of Metaphysics in Persia," p. 75.)

We have seen what Al-Ghazali teaches regarding the life and character of Jesus and also of God’s relation to us through the love of those who seek Him with all their hearts. Are these only Moslems, or is there a wider love of God ? Are all souls in His keeping ?

What were Al-Ghazali’s ideas regarding the salvation of those not in the fold of Islam ? We have two striking passages in this connection which seem to contradict each other. They were probably written at different periods of his life. The first passage which is remarkable indeed for his day and his place in Islam occurs on page 22 of his book Faisul Al-Tafriqa Bain al Islam vSal Zandiqa and reads as follows : " I here state that most Christians of the Greeks and of the Turks in our day will be included in the mercy of God. Namely, those who are on the confines of the empire and to whom the call to embrace Islam has not come. For they consist of three classes : One class has never heard the name of Mohammed (upon whom be prayers and peace) and they are excusable. Another class have heard of his name and title and the miracles which were wrought by him ; they who live as neighbours among Moslems ; these are the true infidels and sceptics. And the other class are between these two ; they have heard of the name of Mohammed (upon him be prayers and peace), but have not heard of his title and character. On the contrary they have heard from their youth up that he is a liar and deceiver called Mohammed, who pretended to have the gift of prophecy : in the same way as our children have heard of a false prophet in Khorasan called Al-Mukaffa who pretended to be a prophet. And these last, in my opinion, belong to the first class as to their hope for the future." This account is the more remarkable because in this very chapter he says that God told Adam, according to Tradition, "that out of a thousand of his descendants nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine go to hell and one only will be saved."

On the last page of the Ihya, however, Al-Ghazali expresses the opinion that on the day of judgment not a single Mohammedan, whatever be his character, will enter the fire ! He then quotes a tradition which says that for every Moslem designed to go to hell God will at the last day substitute a Jew or a Christian, evidently approving this substitution-doctrine as satisfactory to God’s mercy towards all who confess Mohammed and to His decree that hell shall be filled with its quota of unbelievers. (See Surah 50 : 29.) The last page of the Ihya, alas, again shows the Moslem spirit of intolerance which prevails even to-day. Men do not remember the more liberal judgment in his other treatise. Al-Ghazali’s attitude towards Christianity and his quotations from the Gospel narrative did much to leaven Persian thought and gave Jesus of Nazareth a large place in later mysticism especially in the foremost mystical poet the immortal author of the Masnavi, Jallal-ud-Din Ar Rumi. He draws the great Lesson from the life of Christ which Al-Ghazali only hints at in his quotations ; namely that Jesus is the Life-giver :

" Thyself reckon dead, and then thou shalt fly
Free, free, from the prison of earth to the sky !
Spring may come, but on granite will grow no green thing :
It was barren in winter, ’tis barren in spring ;
And granite man’s heart is, till grace intervene.
And, crushing it, clothe the long barren with green,
When the fresh breath of Jesus shall touch the heart’s core,
It will live, it will breathe, it will blossom once more."

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The City of Mashad, close to the ruins of Tus, where Al-Ghazali was born and where he died, has been truly described as the Mecca of the Persian world. Its streets are crowded with a hundred thousand pilgrims every year. The American Presbyterian Church has an important work there, and the Bible Societies report thousands of copies of the Bible sold there. " We have inundated the City of Mashad with the Word of God," wrote the late Mr. Esselstyn ; " in the bazaars I have repeatedly been warned some one will kill me if we do not stop selling the Scriptures and preaching. But ’Lo, I am with you always’ keeps ringing in my ears and we continue. The Scriptures that have been sold in and around Mashad are sown seed and in due time we shall reap if we faint not."

To-day the black-browed Afghan, the Uzbek Tartar, the dervish, travel-stained and footsore, nay the poorest lad of Khorasan can buy the whole story of what Jesus did and taught. No Moslem is now dependent on Al-Ghazali’s few quotations from the Gospel. A new day has dawned for Persia and the Near East. Everywhere the New Testament is better known than any of the ninety-nine works of Al-Ghazali, and we may also say, without exaggeration, that the New Testament finds a larger circle of readers. The mystics in Islam are near the Kingdom of God and for them Al-Ghazali may be used as a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ. Did not the author of the Gulshan-i-Ras (the Garden of Mysteries) write : "Dost thou know what Christianity is ? I shall tell it thee. It digs up thine own Ego, and carries thee to God. Thy soul is a monastery wherein dwells oneness, thou art Jerusalem, where the Eternal is enthroned ; the Holy Spirit works this miracle, for know that God’s being rests in the Holy Spirit as in His Own Spirit." And such seekers after God to-day will find those who will lead them to Christ. For, as Dr. J. Rendel Harris expressed it : "All of us who love Christ are beginning to realize that we live in the same street and are on the same telephone, some of us that we are lodged next door to one another and can knock on the partitions, a few that we are all under the same roof and all within arm’s length and heart reach."