Words under debate: soul and decree

This lesson asks you to define terms that are central to the big questions. Here the terms are soul and decree. The museum gives the soul as one report in al-Mas'udi and the decree as the statements of two authors, each attributed to its source. It does not trace how the terms changed over time, so your class will add that. ¹

Read what each record attributes to its source and list the words used for the same thing. Note where two authors use one word differently, and say who is speaking each time.

Read how one text defines a word. In al-'Aqida al-Wasitiyya, as the record of qadar reports, Ibn Taymiyya says: "Belief in the decree is in two degrees, each containing two things" ². The first is God's knowledge of what the creatures will do by His eternal knowledge, then His writing the creatures' measures in the Preserved Tablet. The second is God's operative will and encompassing power: belief that what God wills is, and what He does not will is not, and that there is no creator but Him ³. Al-Tahawi, in the same record, names the words one by one: everything proceeds by His will, knowledge, judgement and decree ⁴. Notice that one text groups the words into two degrees and the other names them one by one. Ask which of the words a reader would have to define first.

The record of Plato files a definition of the soul under the heading "Thought". Read the sentence itself. Al-Mas'udi attributes to some people the claim that the soul is a substance that is not a body, living, knowing and governing bodies, and that its death is its passing from one body to another ⁵. The sentence names "some people", not Plato. Before using it as Plato's definition, a student would have to find a source that gives it to him; the records read here do not.

The record of qadar attributes each position to its own book: al-Tahawi's creed, Ibn Qudama's Lum'at al-I'tiqad, Ibn Taymiyya's al-Wasitiyya, and what al-Ash'ari related in Maqalat al-Islamiyyin of the people of hadith and sunna, ending: "And in all we have mentioned of their saying we speak, and to it we go" ⁶. The record says the sayings of the Maturidis and of the remaining Sunni and non-Sunni schools from their own books have not yet been added, and that the entry needs specialist review before promotion. A definition drawn only from these books reflects these books.

Which word would you define first, freedom or decree, and why? Use the way the records define one of them: if decree is defined by two degrees, knowledge with writing and will with power, does that leave room to define freedom separately?

• Plato: the sentence about the soul, and the sources that carry his sayings into Arabic.
• Qadar: the creed texts, each attributed to its author, and what the entry says it has not yet covered.

Write a one-sentence definition of the soul and one of the decree, each using only words from the record of Plato and qadar, and name the author each time.