LEARNING TO ASK QUESTIONS
=========================
PART TWO
Learning the Etiquette of Asking Questions
According to the Quran, both Abraham and Noah called their people to pay more attention to the world around them and to their own selves, and to think anew those things that they took for granted. Noah (p) says the following, for instance:
What is amiss with you that you cannot look forward to God's majesty, seeing that He has created [every one of] you in successive stages? Do you not see how God has created seven heavens in full harmony with one another, and has set up within them the moon as a light [reflected] and set up the sun as a [radiant] lamp? And God has caused you to grow out of the earth in [gradual] growth; and thereafter He will return you to it [in death]: and [then] He will bring you forth [from It] in resurrection. And God has made the earth a wide expanse for you, so that you might walk thereon on spacious paths.(71:13-19)
The story of Noah in the Quran parallels the biblical account. He stays long years among his people (29: 14), calling them repeatedly, both openly in public and secretly in private. (71:9) Yet, the people insist on rejecting Noah's message, and God tells Noah to build the ark. Then, God brings the flood and commands Noah to get into the ship:
"Place on board of this [ark] one pair of each [kind of animal] of either sex, as well as your family except those on whom [Our] sentence has already been passed and all [others] who attained to faith!"
Next, comes the crucial episode for our purposes:
So the Ark floated with them on the waves (towering) like mountains, and Noah called out to his son, who had separated himself (from the rest): 'O my dear son! Embark with us, and remain not with those who deny [the truth]!'
The son answers by saying that he will betake himself to the mountain, and it will protect him from the flood. Noah warns:
"Today there is no protection [for anyone] from God's judgment, save for those who had earned [His] mercy!"
At that moment a wave comes between Noah and his son, and the son drowns.
Noah was distressed that his son had died as an unbeliever in the flood. This is indeed a heart breaking moment in the story (this is where the reciter of the Quran in annual Ramadan prayers at Kaba breaks into tears, and this is the point my little nephew brings up whenever we speak of the story of Noah.) Had not God promised that his family would be saved? How could this happen?
Theoretically Noah could do several things with this troubling question. One option, which is a seemingly pious one, would be to suppress it, (and there are some commentators who feel the need to explain why Noah upon him be peace did bring this question up.) Another option would be to rebel against God saying that He did not keep his promise. But, Noah does neither of these. Rather, he puts his question in the form of a prayer:
And Noah called upon his Sustainer, and said: 'O my Sustainer! Verily my son was of my family; and verily Thy promise always comes true, and Thou art the most just of all judges!' (11:45)
In other words, he starts reasoning with premises that he is sure of- he is not only sure that his son is from his family, but he is also sure that God keeps His promises and that God is just. He does not suppress his question, since he is aware that like any other creature and event, this question is a potential sign of God. Besides, since he is clear in his "basics," that is, because he has been reading God's other signs in the universe, he is sure that God is all Merciful, Wise and Just. Hence, he has no reason to be afraid of asking the question. And, for these very same reasons Noah does not rebel against God, either, for how can he erase all at once the proofs he had seen for God's justice and promise?
And, it is because of this way of asking questions that Noah (upon him be peace) is able to receive an answer. So, continues the Quranic account: "[God] said: 'O Noah, behold, he was not of thy family, for verily, he was unrighteous in his conduct. And thou shall not ask Me of anything whereof thou hast no knowledge: thus, behold, I admonish thee lest you become one of those who are ignorant." Noah, then, ends up retracting one of his premises- the premise that he took for granted without much thought. He gains a new definition of family- a more profound understanding that all believers are one family, and that the faith bond surpasses blood bonds. Noah readily answers in praise and prayer to this new insight.
Another exemplary way of framing questions is seen in Abraham, narrated in Quran 2:260. In this episode, he asks a question about resurrection: "Behold! Abraham said: 'My Lord! Show me how Thou give life to the dead.'" And, God answers with a question: "Do you not then believe?" Of course, God would know Abraham's faith better than Abraham himself. Here the principle of tanazzulat al ilahiyya is explicitly useful: the speech is not just Divine speech but Divine speech addressed to the creature, God is speaking to Abraham, hence God's question is for Abraham's and our sake rather than being for God's information. Thus, He must be asking this so as to teach him (and us) that the orientation with which one asks a question is decisive in getting answers. Abraham (p) answers: "Yes, [I do,] but [I ask] in order that my heart may be at ease." As a response, God shows him a sign. This means that his question has been accepted, while there are many other requests of miracles that have been rejected in the Quran (e.g. 20: 133).
Here, I would like to underscore the way Abraham puts his question, he puts the question as someone who gets his premises right. Or, as one commentator puts it, he asks it with courtesy (adab). This courtesy is evident right from the start, for he begins with "O my Lord/ Sustainer." He asks as someone who had asked the basic questions about the world in the light of Revelation and realized that God is all powerful. Yet, this awareness, the fact that he is a believer, does not make him suppress his question, the need of his "heart" to actually see another example of resurrection.
Some of the traditional commentaries go into details of why Abraham could have asked such a question. These commentators provide different contexts for this question, some of which are a bit unexpected, but they all agree that he was not asking this because he underestimated God's power. Rather, the question was a request to move up from one certainty level to a higher one. Indeed, as one commentator said, only the knower of God ['arif billah] asks such a question, for he would want a higher degree of certainty.
Conclusion
In one of his articles, Rowan Williams asks how we are "authorized" to speak of God and he discusses how theology learns its language. Williams is rightly worried that if we take revelation as something static and dogmatic, then revelation will be "heteronomous," an alien view imposed from "an elusive 'elsewhere.'" As an antidote, he proposes that revelation should be seen as a dynamic event, "that break[s] existing frames of reference and initiate new possibilities of life." Williams notes that on the one hand, revelation is an event that 'grasps' us (to use Paul Tillich's terminology), which "opens up a world" in Ricoeur's words that is not made by us. Hence, it is calling us beyond ourselves. From an Islamic perspective this may correlate with the Quran's insistence on casting aside the shell of familiarity to see "ordinary" things anew, as signs of God.
On the other hand, this request of the Quran to ask questions is not a heteronomous imposition on us but a reasonable, comprehensible request. As Williams emphasizes, encountering revelation is not a passive act; it emerges also by the questions of its witness: "Thus revelation is a concept which emerges from a questioning attention to our present life in life of a particular past." He notes that only when the community reconstructs itself in response and in guidance of revelation that it can be "authorized" to speak of God. As a Muslim, I take this to be parallel to Abraham's and Noah's (p) "authorization" to ask questions about God. The right questions are possible only after one opens oneself to the new way of reasoning that the Scripture brings.
Finally, journey to God is a journey of learning how to ask questions. As Charles Mathewes interprets Augustine's continued search for God after his conversion, the activity of asking questions is "a basic mode of being-in-the-world." Faith does not suppress questions, rather it encourages them and gives them a direction. Indeed, when one moves beyond that threshold into faith, the questions do not cease. Though they take a different form, they still serve to strengthen the faith. An important consequence of this is that faith is not seen as dogmatic and static; rather it is seen as open to questions and ever evolving. And this is the point where "questioning blossoms into exegesis," encountered both in creation and Scripture.
=========================
PART TWO
Learning the Etiquette of Asking Questions
According to the Quran, both Abraham and Noah called their people to pay more attention to the world around them and to their own selves, and to think anew those things that they took for granted. Noah (p) says the following, for instance:
What is amiss with you that you cannot look forward to God's majesty, seeing that He has created [every one of] you in successive stages? Do you not see how God has created seven heavens in full harmony with one another, and has set up within them the moon as a light [reflected] and set up the sun as a [radiant] lamp? And God has caused you to grow out of the earth in [gradual] growth; and thereafter He will return you to it [in death]: and [then] He will bring you forth [from It] in resurrection. And God has made the earth a wide expanse for you, so that you might walk thereon on spacious paths.(71:13-19)
The story of Noah in the Quran parallels the biblical account. He stays long years among his people (29: 14), calling them repeatedly, both openly in public and secretly in private. (71:9) Yet, the people insist on rejecting Noah's message, and God tells Noah to build the ark. Then, God brings the flood and commands Noah to get into the ship:
"Place on board of this [ark] one pair of each [kind of animal] of either sex, as well as your family except those on whom [Our] sentence has already been passed and all [others] who attained to faith!"
Next, comes the crucial episode for our purposes:
So the Ark floated with them on the waves (towering) like mountains, and Noah called out to his son, who had separated himself (from the rest): 'O my dear son! Embark with us, and remain not with those who deny [the truth]!'
The son answers by saying that he will betake himself to the mountain, and it will protect him from the flood. Noah warns:
"Today there is no protection [for anyone] from God's judgment, save for those who had earned [His] mercy!"
At that moment a wave comes between Noah and his son, and the son drowns.
Noah was distressed that his son had died as an unbeliever in the flood. This is indeed a heart breaking moment in the story (this is where the reciter of the Quran in annual Ramadan prayers at Kaba breaks into tears, and this is the point my little nephew brings up whenever we speak of the story of Noah.) Had not God promised that his family would be saved? How could this happen?
Theoretically Noah could do several things with this troubling question. One option, which is a seemingly pious one, would be to suppress it, (and there are some commentators who feel the need to explain why Noah upon him be peace did bring this question up.) Another option would be to rebel against God saying that He did not keep his promise. But, Noah does neither of these. Rather, he puts his question in the form of a prayer:
And Noah called upon his Sustainer, and said: 'O my Sustainer! Verily my son was of my family; and verily Thy promise always comes true, and Thou art the most just of all judges!' (11:45)
In other words, he starts reasoning with premises that he is sure of- he is not only sure that his son is from his family, but he is also sure that God keeps His promises and that God is just. He does not suppress his question, since he is aware that like any other creature and event, this question is a potential sign of God. Besides, since he is clear in his "basics," that is, because he has been reading God's other signs in the universe, he is sure that God is all Merciful, Wise and Just. Hence, he has no reason to be afraid of asking the question. And, for these very same reasons Noah does not rebel against God, either, for how can he erase all at once the proofs he had seen for God's justice and promise?
And, it is because of this way of asking questions that Noah (upon him be peace) is able to receive an answer. So, continues the Quranic account: "[God] said: 'O Noah, behold, he was not of thy family, for verily, he was unrighteous in his conduct. And thou shall not ask Me of anything whereof thou hast no knowledge: thus, behold, I admonish thee lest you become one of those who are ignorant." Noah, then, ends up retracting one of his premises- the premise that he took for granted without much thought. He gains a new definition of family- a more profound understanding that all believers are one family, and that the faith bond surpasses blood bonds. Noah readily answers in praise and prayer to this new insight.
Another exemplary way of framing questions is seen in Abraham, narrated in Quran 2:260. In this episode, he asks a question about resurrection: "Behold! Abraham said: 'My Lord! Show me how Thou give life to the dead.'" And, God answers with a question: "Do you not then believe?" Of course, God would know Abraham's faith better than Abraham himself. Here the principle of tanazzulat al ilahiyya is explicitly useful: the speech is not just Divine speech but Divine speech addressed to the creature, God is speaking to Abraham, hence God's question is for Abraham's and our sake rather than being for God's information. Thus, He must be asking this so as to teach him (and us) that the orientation with which one asks a question is decisive in getting answers. Abraham (p) answers: "Yes, [I do,] but [I ask] in order that my heart may be at ease." As a response, God shows him a sign. This means that his question has been accepted, while there are many other requests of miracles that have been rejected in the Quran (e.g. 20: 133).
Here, I would like to underscore the way Abraham puts his question, he puts the question as someone who gets his premises right. Or, as one commentator puts it, he asks it with courtesy (adab). This courtesy is evident right from the start, for he begins with "O my Lord/ Sustainer." He asks as someone who had asked the basic questions about the world in the light of Revelation and realized that God is all powerful. Yet, this awareness, the fact that he is a believer, does not make him suppress his question, the need of his "heart" to actually see another example of resurrection.
Some of the traditional commentaries go into details of why Abraham could have asked such a question. These commentators provide different contexts for this question, some of which are a bit unexpected, but they all agree that he was not asking this because he underestimated God's power. Rather, the question was a request to move up from one certainty level to a higher one. Indeed, as one commentator said, only the knower of God ['arif billah] asks such a question, for he would want a higher degree of certainty.
Conclusion
In one of his articles, Rowan Williams asks how we are "authorized" to speak of God and he discusses how theology learns its language. Williams is rightly worried that if we take revelation as something static and dogmatic, then revelation will be "heteronomous," an alien view imposed from "an elusive 'elsewhere.'" As an antidote, he proposes that revelation should be seen as a dynamic event, "that break[s] existing frames of reference and initiate new possibilities of life." Williams notes that on the one hand, revelation is an event that 'grasps' us (to use Paul Tillich's terminology), which "opens up a world" in Ricoeur's words that is not made by us. Hence, it is calling us beyond ourselves. From an Islamic perspective this may correlate with the Quran's insistence on casting aside the shell of familiarity to see "ordinary" things anew, as signs of God.
On the other hand, this request of the Quran to ask questions is not a heteronomous imposition on us but a reasonable, comprehensible request. As Williams emphasizes, encountering revelation is not a passive act; it emerges also by the questions of its witness: "Thus revelation is a concept which emerges from a questioning attention to our present life in life of a particular past." He notes that only when the community reconstructs itself in response and in guidance of revelation that it can be "authorized" to speak of God. As a Muslim, I take this to be parallel to Abraham's and Noah's (p) "authorization" to ask questions about God. The right questions are possible only after one opens oneself to the new way of reasoning that the Scripture brings.
Finally, journey to God is a journey of learning how to ask questions. As Charles Mathewes interprets Augustine's continued search for God after his conversion, the activity of asking questions is "a basic mode of being-in-the-world." Faith does not suppress questions, rather it encourages them and gives them a direction. Indeed, when one moves beyond that threshold into faith, the questions do not cease. Though they take a different form, they still serve to strengthen the faith. An important consequence of this is that faith is not seen as dogmatic and static; rather it is seen as open to questions and ever evolving. And this is the point where "questioning blossoms into exegesis," encountered both in creation and Scripture.
No comments:
Post a Comment