We begin in the Lead Article with a discussion about how to avoid inner decay, a phenomenon that can cause people to drift away from what it means to be human by becoming lost in despair. This anguish spreads through the heart and body like a disease and subsequently causes everything to look bleak, taste bland, and feel pointless. It is contrasted heavily by the light of belief, which has the opposite effect and lifts the soul up into tranquility.

Our narrative by Lawrence Brazier that delves into the wonderful world of pottery and his thought process behind trying to make the best pieces. His discussion with his friend reveals how he believes, in his opinion, that attaining inner peace produces the best kind of art. His perspective is that art should calm and soothe as opposed to provoke and agitate, therefore encouraging a peaceful state of mind in order to achieve the desired result.

Celine Dan Tam Nguyen’s memoir explores how her grandmother, whose husband was killed in a war, had to strengthen her resolve every day in order to provide for herself and her five children. Her survival depended upon defiantly standing up to a patriarchal society that encouraged her to simply sit down and accept defeat. It is a harrowing story of the toll that war takes on innocent families, and how they must find peace within in order to persist during such trying times.

Irfan Yilmaz writes a beautiful article on the intricacies and immense qualities of the hummingbird, the world’s smallest bird. It is renowned for its speed, precision, and rapid heart-rate despite being such a tiny creature. We may also achieve inner peace by temporarily removing ourselves from the noise of our society and by ruminating on the beauty of the natural world around us in creations such as the hummingbird.

For this tree, the seed is intelligence, water is determination, air is patience, and effort is excitement. One thing to consider is that imagination and fantasy are not the same concept. Whereas imagination is the seed of realistic, logical plans and projects designed in accordance with long term goals regarding life and the future, fantasy involves short term projections out of proportion with reality, emotion, and rational thought. In this sense, there is no imagination that does not sprout its roots towards the goal and does not disperse the seeds of excitement to the human soul. This is because imagination is like a pile of emotions that sustain us in the years ahead. It is the energy that powers the heart, the mystery juice which injects excitement into our minds, a framework of desires that bind us to life. It helps us to believe that one man’s expectations for life are as good as his dreams; his earnings will match his excitement. Imagination and the resulting “excitement” is a great blessing that brings out treasures, love, and skills hidden inside us. Above all, imagination can help us to achieve success in all of our endeavors. This is true of science, too.

Defining scientific success can be tricky. It requires effort, hard work, and observation to achieve scientific success. But most importantly, it requires intelligence which is a blessing. Just like a licensed driver controlling a car, the brain’s performance improves with the skill of its driver. To maximize the brain’s potential, it is very important to integrate the heart and conscience with the use of intelligence.

Can we explain the reality that there is only a limited number of scientists because they were born as such or inherited this quality genetically? The reality is thousands of babies are born with brain capacities similar to that of scientists’ in terms of anatomy, histology, physiology, and biochemistry. Even though human intelligence is partly determined by inheritance, there are other factors. If the case was as simple as inheritance, would Einstein say, “I do not have any special skill, but I am passionately curious”? When Thomas Edison said, “1% of genius is inspiration and 99% is sweat,” he captured perfectly that one needs more than just intelligence to achieve success – one also needs to maximize that intelligence through hard work.

Scholar Bediuzzaman Said Nursi summarized the stages of knowledge development of the human mind in seven steps. “One first imagines something (tahayyul), then conceives of it, and clothes it in a form (tasawwur). Afterwards, one reasons and reflects on this thing (taaqqul), then confirms it (tasdiq), and then has full conviction of it (iz’an). Then they fully support it (iltizam); then they become committed or devoted to it (itiqad)” (The Words, Gleams of Truth).

Each of these stages is subject to different rulings. They form the ladder to higher meanings. Thus, if a person is unaware of the step occupied, he/she ends up remaining in the lower stages and acts according to the necessities of that particular level.

Therefore if we do not want to leave our scientific approach at the dimension of “sophistry,” which starts with imagination (tahayyul), we have to continue our intellectual and ideological journey all the way to the end. Imagination, which is often overlooked, bears the seed of intelligence, which is a blessing offered from the infinite ocean of God’s wisdom. Imagination is the unprinted photo of our intellectual aptitudes. How do you like to print and uncover your dreams?

According to theological fatalists, all events, including human deeds, are absolutely determined by God’s foreknowledge and will. We human beings think we can act or carry out our actions voluntarily, but if God foreknows how we will act in the future, in other words, that we will act in a specific way, then we must necessarily act as He knows because divine knowledge is infallible and unchangeable. If we act out of necessity, then there is no voluntary choice in our acts and thus God’s foreknowledge of what we will do in the future determines our will. In order to establish their ideas they argue that even though humankind wishes to be happy in the future, we cannot be happy because we do not have the power to be happy; only God makes one happy. In short, for fatalists, God’s foreknowledge and will is a necessity.

Augustine, like other monotheists, defines God as omnipotent, omniscient and good. For his definition, God unerringly foreknows everything, including our future acts, so the problem here is whether divine knowledge determines our acts in the future. By making use of the dialectical method, that is, the Socratic Method, and some philosophical arguments, Augustine seeks to prove the existence of free will and then analyzes the problem of the compatibility of free will and God’s foreknowledge. As an answer to the question posed by theological fatalists: “Why can we not achieve our future will if we have free will?” his reply is that we may wish to be happy in the future, but may not be able to achieve this because to do so would be dependent on factors that are wholly beyond our control. In other words, there may always be external constraints which hinder us in fulfilling our desires.

Thus, for Augustine, we can not speak about freedom of action, but only freedom of will. When we use the concept of “something being in our power,” we mean simply “being able to do what we will.” Therefore, there are very few things that are in our own power, but our will is one of them; for in the moment we wish to do something the “will” is there and we discover it within ourselves. This is a kind of psychological argument that proves Augustine’s claim for the existence of will; in addition, Augustine uses a linguistic analysis to support this. The propositions “It is not voluntarily that we will” and “It is necessarily that we will” are meaningless and far from true. For if we necessarily will, why do we need to speak of “willing” at all? When we say “we wish to do anything” we directly claim that we have a faculty called “the will.” Lastly, he called attention to a logical mistake; his logical analysis of “what we will” as “a physical action” and “an effect of our will” is completely different from “our will” as a spiritual action. Even if we do not achieve what we will, we cannot say that we do not have the power to will. We may only think “we will” but in fact we do not achieve whatever we wish, for our success in attaining what we wish depends not only on our will, but also on other factors that are wholly beyond our control. However our will itself would be our own as long as it remains in our power, therefore, “it is not necessary to deny that God has foreknowledge of all things while at the same time our will is our own”; in other words, God’s foreknowledge of the entire future does not determine our will. Despite all of these arguments, Augustine concludes: “we shall exercise our wills in the future because He has foreknowledge that we shall do so.” Rather, it would be more consistent with his arguments if he had said: “He has foreknowledge that we shall exercise our wills in the future, because we are allowed to do so” for we will exercise our future wills with our own will by His permission. In this case, God’s foreknowledge is consistent with our will, but His foreknowledge is not the cause of our choices. But Augustine’s concluding sentences claims the opposite, that is, our will is determined by God’s foreknowledge.

In conclusion, human beings can choose one particular action from among various alternatives. As Augustine concludes, the power to will is not taken from us by or is not opposed to God’s foreknowledge. In fact, Abrahamic religions necessarily support the idea of the compatibility between divine knowledge and human free will. For if we did not have free will, in other words, if we must act in a certain way, then why would God judge us? This would be meaningless. Furthermore, His divine foreknowledge certifies our will because His timeless foreknowledge is consistent with our will in a future time, therefore there is no incompatibility between God’s foreknowledge and our free will.

* This article is a product of my reflections over a section in the book Readings in the History of Christian Theology Volume I by William C. Placher, pp. 106-111.

Izzet Coban is a theologian living in Chicago. He has an MA from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.

Notes

1. Augustine of Hippo or Saint Augustine (354-430) is one of the most important theologians in the development of Christian theology. In Roman Catholicism, he is a saint. His famous works are “The Confessions,” considered to be the first Western autobiography, and has been translated from Latin into many languages, and “On Free Will,” “The City of God,” and “On Christian Doctrine.”
2. Evodius (d. ca 69) appears as a speaker in two of the dialogues that Augustine conducted in the Thagaste community. In his On the Free Choice of the Will, written in 389, Augustine introduced Evodius as the interlocutor. (www.augnet.org)

In line with Professor Nasr’s ideas, and in an effort to seek knowledge in a holistic way, this issue examines diverse topics from science and spirituality. The lead article draws attention to “seditious organizations and followers of Satan who hold a grudge against people-particularly against believers.” With a comprehensive introduction on Satan’s rebellion and his role in the “controversy between unbelief and faith,” Fethullah Gulen calls believers to be on their guard against Satan’s contemporary followers and their temptation.

“Life is too complex to have occurred by mere chance,” says Ahmet Yildiz in his description of energy conversion in the microcosmic world of the cell in our body. Just like in a power plant, there is “a dynamic environment that involves constant formation, breakdown and repair of constituents” in a cell which is perfectly equipped with a command center, defense mechanisms, and the replication and repair systems of DNA.

In “The Last Prayer for Giants” we discover the wisdom in a Prophetic command to plant trees even when one knows doomsday is imminent. The importance of being kind to and protecting nature is emphasized in this allegory.

In return for our kindness to nature and thankfulness, God the All-Merciful

blesses us with many benefits from nature. Patchouli, for instance, is not only famous for its fragrance, but also a useful plant in medicine, in repelling pests, and even in cleaning our homes. There is more in “Health and Natural Balance with Patchouli.”

How do we achieve a balance between our jobs, personal lives, and families

and still serve the sole purpose of our existence-to worship God and seek His pleasure? How is it possible that God will grant believers eternal life although we can only achieve a limited number of actions in a limited lifetime? What is the secret of converting the finite into the infinite? The answer is in Vedat Akyuz’s essay on sincerity.

Medicine, like other fields of science, has developed enormously with techniques which surpass our imaginings. “Open Heart Surgery” is about a technique in which the heart is temporarily stopped while the body is connected to an artificial mechanism. Enis Turker describes this operation which opens a gateway for us to reflect upon the complex functions of our body, which are nothing but divine miracles.

According to the Islamic perspective, there are three types of information sources:

Knowledge obtained through the five senses or relating to these senses. These include, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. For example, something that is seen is there, and something that is felt through touching exists.

According to the trend which accepts only this source of information, anything beyond the perception of these senses cannot be a subject of knowledge. This positivist trend has lost its influence over recent decades; however it was widely popular at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The second source of information is the “mind.” When the “mind” is mentioned, an unbiased decision-making entity, capable of evaluating matter within its pure form, and competent of making an objective decision is implied. The importance of a non-degenerate, unbiased, non-oppressed, functional mind is undeniable for information. In the modern world, rationalism is the representative of this tendency. Since its emergence, Rationalism has always advocated the “mind” as the only source of information. However, even rationalism is not sufficient to achieve true knowledge.

Another source of information is “authentic narration.” Authentic narration should be understood in two ways. Firstly, it is knowledge that has been transmitted by a number of different people and accepted as true. For example, a narration about a continent or a country to which one has never been is an authentic narration. To illustrate further, for a person who has never visited the continents of Australia or America, any accurate information, or first-hand information, obtained is of this type. It is possible that we may not have visited or seen these places, however millions of people live on these continents and hundreds of thousands of people visit these continents every year. The information gathered from these people is so powerful and trustworthy that anyone who has not seen these places cannot doubt their existence.

Secondly, authentic narration can also be considered to be that of “Divine Revelation.” In other words, this would consist of the Divine Books revealed to the messengers by God Almighty, where the revelations were brought by the Angel Gabriel (pbuh).

Human beings are not capable of seeing or hearing everything that exists, and thus they are not capable of knowing everything that exists. The mind cannot comprehend everything that exists. There are so many things that exist but which are not sensed through our senses or understood by our minds, or even, if the mind does understand them, can never be sensed or reached. Hence, the human being can only learn these facts through the teachings of a Divine Being whose knowledge, power, and will surround everything. We can only learn the things He knows to the extent that He teaches us in His Divine Books; in this way we become knowledgeable of those matters.

In order to discover the wonders of the universe and to achieve a better and more accurate knowledge with our five senses and mind, we must make evaluations under the light and wisdom of Divine revelations. Only when manipulated to work under these principles will science be able to accomplish its task of producing the fruit that it should.

Otherwise, partial falsification or incorrect interpretations of the Divine Books is inevitable. Moreover, if only the senses and experience will be the basis of information, then one will be forced to say “I do not believe in anything other than what I see, hear…” This is tantamount to rebelling against everything that the mind puts forward. In fact, if only sensory information is taken as the basis of knowledge, then people will be forced to search for compatibility between their deduced knowledge and the universe that is Created by God Almighty. In such a system, whatever facts agreed with their theorems would be true, anything else would be false. However, as God says in the Qur’an: “We did not take the human beings as witnesses to the creation of the Heavens and the Earth” (18:51). When the Divine revelation is not taken into consideration, every explanation is no more than a theorem or a guess.

Unfortunately, because only the first two types of sources were accepted, many Divine Revelations were rejected. With the progress of science, their validity has once again been proved. For example, the stages of an embryo in the mother’s womb have been well defined. When Omer Khayyam, who was an extreme rationalist, was asked about these verses, his response was to comment against the Qur’anic truth by commenting that the verses were not meant literally. Some other scholars thought that a person can only have faith in the “resurrection,” as it cannot be understood by the mind; however, Said Nursi has explained it with a simple analogy. The resurrection is like the spring that follows the winter. We do not have any actual sensory knowledge that this will happen, we know from observation and reasoning that the spring will come. Since some people only trust in the two types of sources, they had to twist what they read in the Divine Book, even the fundamentals of faith . For example, through the influence of philosophy, Farabi and Ibn-i Rusd, even though they were geniuses of their time, considered the Divine Revelations and the prophethood as being man-made concepts.

Some thought that philosophers were higher in status than the Messengers of God. The All-Knowing God was aware of how the Messengers would perform their duty of conveying the message; i.e. with an extraordinarily superior performance. This is why they were given the prophethood in advance; yet philosophers could not see this fine nuance. Moreover, it can be concluded that philosophers are only translating what Aristotle had earlier said to suit their time.

If the Islamic World is considered as a whole, it can be seen that not everybody fell into these traps. Zehravi, Ali Kuscu, Jalaleddin Devvani, Gelenbevi and many others, did not fall into these traps; they were very religious, and they were very influential in their times. People like Molla Husrev and Al-Harazmi, with their work in sciences that led their fields of study for many centuries, even in the West, were still able to maintain their faith without experiencing any conflict and lived for the most part as religious, pious people.

In conclusion, it would be proper to say that all sources of information must be handled together if one is to achieve an end result. Discriminating between these information sources and taking them discretely will open up pitfalls for humanity. The same pitfalls will continue to open if the same mistakes are repeated. Humanity will have to say “True” to those things it claimed as “False” the day before. However, using the Divine Revelations as the foundations of knowledge, and surrounding and framing them with the information attained from the senses and mind is the only path that will lead us in a true direction.