XIX. Hellenism and Muhammadanism

Extract

I believe I shall be doing good service to students of Moslem literature if I venture to call their attention to a recently published book, which at first sight may seem quite foreign to their special subject. Dr. Caird's recent Gifford Lectures on the “ Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers” throw a flood of light on the genesis and growth of those Hellenic ideas which have so profoundly modified Christian and some parts of Moslem theology. The scholastic and the mystical theology of Christendom and Islam ran in courses parallel to one another, and the influence of the Hellenic factor is equally operative in both. Each may be regarded as the offspring of a cross between Hebraic and Hellenic ideas. It has, of course, long been recognised that Moslem scholastic theology (Al Kalām) has been built up, like its Christian counterpart, from Aristotelian concepts, and, moreover, that the Christian schoolmen drew much of their knowledge of Aristotle from Arabic authorities. The great commentary of Averroes, for instance, is mentioned by Dante, who censures his doctrine of the Universal Soul, afterwards condemned by the Lateran Council of 1512. Long ago, Jourdain made a careful study of the translations of Aristotle used by the schoolmen, and showed how many of them had come through Arabic. Schmölders proved that Moslem scholasticism is Aristotle with a Neo-Platonic colouring. The so-called “ Theology of Aristotle,” for instance, is merely a summary of the Enneads of Plotinus, “the Shaikh of the Greeks.”