Presented at the graduate conference “God and the Unconditional”, April 1- April 2, 2022, University of Villanova, Pennsylvania
Abstract
This paper attempts to bring contemporary thinkers into dialogue with those from the past, as well as different traditions. For this purpose, I shall contrast Hureyre Kam’s view of the unaccessible unconditionality of God with the view of the traditionalist Seyyed Hossein Nasr, before initiating a discussion of its applicability on St. Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity, especially the coessentiality of the hypostases and their being relational.
Nasr suggests "the Absolute" as the starting point instead of "Creator God" to be metaphysically more appropriate to the unconditional God. This would not only allow the simultaneity of different concepts of God but alongside monotheistic views also non-monotheistic views of the Divine. I will argue that his notion enables a positive and partially graspable concept of the unconditional, scilicet God can be transcendent and immanent, unconditional and accessible simultaneously, for otherwise the condition of unconditionality would be violated. I shall elaborate this line of thought in the light of Islamic thinking before finally bringing it into dialogue with St. Augustine's doctrine of the Trinity. In the first section, I shall reconstruct the tension between God's unconditionality and human conditionality from the perspective of Hureyre Kam as one contemporary of Islamic Thought. Then I will define "absoluteness" by discriminating it from "universality". This will be followed by presenting Nasr's philosophical approach of the positive notion of God’s Absoluteness, His Unconditionality and the potentially infinite forms of manifestations. Finally, I shall illustrate its grounding in Islamic reality on the basis of “Allāhu Akbar“, before turning to St. Augustine.