In 2022 the Institute of Islamic Theology at the University of Paderborn hosted a delightful conference on Divine Attributes in Classical Islamic Thought and in Contemporary Islamic Theology. My contribution was:

“God’s Attributes of Will, Speech, and Justice in Muʿtazilī Thought: Interconnections and Implications.” Divine Attributes in Classical Islamic Thought and in Contemporary Islamic Theology, Paderborn Institute of Islamic Theology, Paderborn University, Germany, August 19, 2022.

That paper has now been published in Forum Islamic–Theological Studies, a relatively new journal published by the Institute for Islamic Theology and Religious Education at the University of Innsbruck:

“God’s Attributes of Will, Speech, and Justice in Muʿtazilī Thought: Interconnections and Implications.” Forum Islamic–Theological Studies 4 no. 1 (2025): 7–26.

The article is published Open Access under a CC BY license and is available as a PDF here and on the journal’s web site.

Abstract: The twin Muʿtazilī principles of divine Oneness and divine Justice did not sit together comfortably: if God is eternally unique and completely transcendent, how can he produce, know, and act upon the temporal material world in ways that are beneficial to humans and thus worthy of a just God? This essay recounts how one strand of Muʿtazilī theologians, running from Abū al-Hudhayl to ʿAbd al-Jabbār, attempted to bridge the gap between the eternal and created realms by the way they defined God’s attributes. They wove their theories of God’s closely interconnected attributes of will, speech, and justice into a thoroughly anthropocentric web of doctrine centered not on God’s eternal knowledge and power but on human knowledge, human power, and human concerns. That anthropological recentering of theology remains relevant for Muslims today.