Tag Archives: Islamic theology

Theologies of Divine Speech and the Human Exigencies of Law

Leave a comment
Categories: Publications

My contribution to a conference the relationship between Islamic theology and Islamic Law, convened by Muna Tatari and Idris Nassery at the University of Paderborn in 2021, has been published:

“Theologies of Divine Speech and the Human Exigencies of Law: A Conundrum for Classical and Contemporary Islamic Legal Hermeneutics.” In Dynamics of Tradition: Islamic Theology and Law in Relation, ed. Idris Nassery and Muna Tatari, 35–61. Studies in Islamic Law and Society, ed. A. Kevin Reinhart and Nadjma Yassari, no. 57. Leiden: Brill, 2026.

The published article can be found on Brill’s website here. I am unable to post the published version, but you can download the Accepted Version as a pdf here.

God’s Attributes of Will, Speech, and Justice in Muʿtazili Thought

Leave a comment
Categories: Publications

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.

The Anthropological Turn in Islamic Theologies of Revelation

Leave a comment
Categories: Presentations

Many thanks to Amir Dziri and Hansjörg Schmid, both of the Swiss Center for Islam and Society at the University of Fribourg, for inviting me to join an exciting, coherent, and flawlessly organized conference celebrating the dissertations of seven graduates of their doctoral program in “Islam and Society: Islamic-theological Studies.” My presentation responded to an innovative and sophisticated dissertation by Esma Isis-Arnautović (“Vom Menschenbild zum Paradigma: Zur Begründbarkeit einer theologischen Anthropologie im Islam”):

“The Anthropological Turn in Islamic Theologies of Revelation.” On the Future of a Young Discipline: Islamic-theological Studies between Systematic and Practical Research, Swiss Center for Islam and Society, University of Fribourg / Paulus Akademie, Zurich, May 31, 2022.

Here is a pdf of the slides for my presentation.

The whole conference has been interpreted and memorialized in a magnificent summary by Esma Isis-Arnautović, Amir Dziri and Hansjörg Schmid, “From Zakāt to Theological Anthropology: Systematic and Practical Approaches in Islamic-Theological Studies,” available at https://doi.org/10.51363/unifr.szigs.2023.009.

Thanks to Anna Pohorielova for her fine photographs.

Theologies of Divine Speech and the Human Exigencies of Law

Leave a comment
Categories: Presentations

Many thanks to Muna Tatari and Idris Nassery for their warm hospitality and engagement during their conference on “Dynamics of Tradition: Islamic Theology and Law in Relation” at the University of Paderborn, September 17-19, 2021. I presented the following paper:

“Theologies of Divine Speech and the Human Exigencies of Law: A Conundrum for Classical and Contemporary Islamic Legal Hermeneutics.” Dynamics of Tradition: Islamic Theology and Law in Relation, Institute for Islamic Theology, University of Paderborn, Germany, September 19, 2021.

Here is a pdf of the pre-conference draft, without documentation, from which I presented excerpts at the conference.

The final paper was published in the conference volume, from Brill, in 2025.

Informative and Performative Theories of Divine Speech in Classical Islamic Legal Theory

Leave a comment
Categories: Publications

This paper, delivered in 2017 at the conference on “Intention and Signification: Philosophy of Language Across Islamic Disciplines, 800-1200” organized by Nadja Germann at the University of Freiburg, has been published in the conference volume:

David R. Vishanoff. “Informative and Performative Theories of Divine Speech in Classical Islamic Legal Theory.” In Philosophy and Language in the Islamic World, ed. Nadja Germann and Mostafa Najafi, 183–208. Philosophy in the Islamic World in Context, ed. Peter Adamson, et al., no. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110552409-007

The volume is available from De Gruyter.

Abstract: The Qurʾān describes God’s speech as powerful and creative: “When he decrees something he merely says to it ‘Be!’ and it is.” Just as impressively, when he desires to make an action obligatory he merely says “I oblige you to do it,” or even just “do it!” This is an example of what some modern theorists of language call performative speech, which brings about a new state of affairs rather than just conveying information about what is already the case. This essay considers the emergence of the concept of performative speech in classical Islamic legal theory, presenting the debate over whether to regard God’s speech as informative or performative as part of an ongoing argument over the nature of law, the nature of God’s speech, and the relationship between them. After a brief discussion of Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820), the essay presents the views of four contrasting thinkers of the late 4th/10th and early 5th/11th centuries: the Shāfiʿī jurist and Muʿtazilī theologian ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025), who treated God’s speech as a purely informative description from which human beings may deduce the details of an ontologically and epistemologically prior moral order; the Ḥanbalī Abū Yaʿlā Ibn al-Farrāʾ (d. 458/1066), who took the opposite tack, treating God’s speech as a performative speech act that brings about obligations with the immediacy of a master’s face–to–face orders to a slave; the Mālikī jurist and Ashʿarī theologian Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), who sought to have it both ways; and the Ḥanafī Abū Zayd al-Dabūsī (d. ca. 430/1038), who appears to have introduced the term inshāʾ into Sunni legal theory. These last two thinkers sought, in very different ways, to affirm that legal obligations are brought about by God’s speech; yet they treated the language of revelation as a source of information and indicative evidence from which human interpreters could reconstruct the law through a flexible interpretive process.