Ibn Taymiyya's Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism

Cover13; -- Contents13; -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Chapter One: Worship, Religious Epistemology and Theological Jurisprudence -- Ibn Taymiyya as a Theological Jurist -- The Centrality of Worshipping God Alone -- The Correspondence of Reason and Revelation -- On Knowing that God Exists and that He Alone should be Worshipped -- The Methodology of Theological Jurisprudence -- The Apologetic Quality of Ibn Taymiyya's Theological Jurisprudence -- Chapter Two: God's Wise Purpose, Perpetual Activity and Self-Suffi ciency -- The Problematic of God's Goodness and God's Self-Suffi ciency -- Joseph Bell on God's Wise Purpose and Self-Suffi ciency in Ibn Taymiyya's Theology -- Ibn Taymiyya's Classification of Views on Wise Purpose/ Causality in the Will of God -- The Ash'ar239; Case against Causality in the Will of God: It Entails Imperfection and Origination in God, as well as an Infi nite Regress -- Ibn Taymiyya's Case for a God Who Acts Perpetually for Wise Purposes and Creates from Eternity -- Ibn Taymiyya on God's Voluntary Acts Subsisting in God's Essence -- Ibn Taymiyya on God's Suffi ciency apart from the Worlds in the Exercise of Wise Purpose -- Conclusion -- Chapter Three: God's Creation and God's Command -- Ibn Taymiyya's Creation/Command Hermeneutic -- Ibn Taymiyya's Classifi cation of Errors in Creation and Command -- Ibn Taymiyya: Analogy Is the Cause of Error in Creation and Command -- Modes of Expressing Creation and Command in Ibn Taymiyya's Thought -- Ibn Taymiyya Defending the Coherence of Creation and Command -- Conclusion -- Chapter Four: God's Creation of Acts in the Human Agent -- Ibn Taymiyya's View of the Human Act in Prior Research -- The Theological and Philosophical Context -- Ibn Taymiyya on the Compatibility of Divine Creation and Human Action -- Ibn Taymiyya's View of Divine Creation by Means of Secondary Causes -- Ibn Taymiyya on Controversial Kal228;m Terms Relating to Human Agency -- Ibn Taymiyya's Compatibilism as the Golden Mean (wasat) -- Conclusion -- Chapter Five: The Wise Purpose and Origin of Evil -- Ibn Taymiyya and the Explanation of Evil in Islamic Theodicies -- Ibn Taymiyya's Evil Attribution Typology -- Ibn Taymiyya on God's Wise Purposes in the Creation of Evil -- Ibn Taymiyya's Location of the Origin of Evil in Nonexistence ('adam) -- Conclusion (Chapter Six: The Justice of God and the Best of All Possible) -- Worlds -- Introduction -- Ibn Taymiyya's Three-fold Typology on God's Justice ('adl) -- Ibn Taymiyya on God's Power and al-Ghaz228;l239;'s Best of All Possible Worlds -- Conclusion -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Ibn Taymiyya's Writings -- Collected Works with Abbreviations -- Ibn Taymiyya's Treatises with Short Titles -- Works of Others Found in the Collected Works of Ibn Taymiyya -- Other Arabic and Western Language Sources -- Index.