Ibn Taymiyyah on Creation ex Materia

This book is the second in an envisioned series of translations from Ibn Taymiyyah’s theological works that cover a wide range of topics from the evidences of God’s perfection to the signs of Prophethood, and from the meaning of God’s creative agency to the compatibility of divine predestination with human moral agency. The series aims to provide readers from the English-speaking world access to Ibn Taymiyyah’s articulations of these important matters of the Faith in an effort to demonstrate the superior rationality embodied in Islamic Faith over the conflicting claims of rationality offered by other religions, philosophies and theological positions. Such an English series is much needed nowadays, especially in response to current challenges posed by growing trends of atheism. Ibn Taymiyyah’s exceptional insight and distinguished explanations of Qurʾanic arguments have helped many Muslims remain intellectually satisfied in the face of doubts and challenges presented by competing world views. In Bayān Talbīs al-Jahmiyyah, Ibn Taymiyyah provides a rational argument against the philosophical position that creation ex materia is necessarily a rearrangement of already existing matter. In his other work Kitāb al-Nubuwwāt, he promotes a more scriptural definition of creation ex materia that involves the origination of substances in place of other substances.