Preface
D,
URING recent years there has been a revival of
mediaeval.
The Neo-Thomist
school of philosophy
is
interest in things
but one evidence of
Different scholars have reminded us that the Middle Ages arc not a backwater nor a bayou having little connection with the great stream of intellectual movements in our civilized world. Nor can one fully appreci-
this.
ate this period in the history of
Islam and Judaism.
on
Europe and ignore the contributions of
The dependence
of the theologians of the three faiths the metaphysics of Aristotle for terminology and expression made for a
mutual exchange of thought that refutes forever the idea that the religions which thrived in the Mediterranean world existed in isolated compartments or dealt with one another only through war and persecution. Etienne Gilson in his Unity of Philosophical Experience records the simiin principles and conclusions between al-Ash'arl and Descartes.
larities
Spinoza, the Jew of Amsterdam, was influenced by Maimonides, the Jew of Cairo, who although a real Aristotelian was greatly indebted to Ibn Smsi
and other Muslim influence of Ibn
writers.
Rushd on
Miguel Asin
in various
the theology of
volumes has shown the
Thomas Aquinas,
of Ibn 'Arab!
on Raymond
Lull, and of Muslim eschatology on Dante's Divine Comedy. The three groups, the Christians, the Jews, and the Muslims, used simi-
lar
arguments to prove the creatio ex
ment
in the scholastic
nihilo.
Yet in
spite of
much
agree-
method, doctrines peculiar to each naturally per-
The orthodox theology of Islam developed a unique theory for explaining the active relationship of the Creator to His universe. This contribution to the catalogue of cosmologies is not so well known in the sisted.
West. Maimonides, to
ment
whom we
are indebted for the best systematic state-
of this doctrine, 1 agreed with a
sidering these explanations of world
number
phenomena
of
Muslim thinkers in conand as contrary
as fantastic
to the accepted principles of Aristode.
But
Time
it is
lies
just because this theory of
al-Nasafi that this exposition of a 1
Continuous Re-Creation and Atomic
behind the explanations given by al-Taftazam of the Creed of
The Guide
for the Perplexed,
tr.
Muslim creed
Fricdlandcr,
I,
is
chap. 73.
of great interest.
The