The Human Being in Eastern Church Father’s and Al-Ghazali’s Philosophical Theology

Abstract

The authors analyze two historical types of philosophical culture—the classical Eastern Patristics and Arab–Muslim medieval thought. They are united by the religious doctrine of man, which allows considering the intercultural and inter-theological nature of these traditions. In more particular terms, the article examines the understanding of the human being of the thinkers of Nicaea and post-Nicaea periods of Eastern patristics—Athanasius of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor—and Abu Hamid al-Ghazali as the most profound representative of the Sufi philosophical–theological system of the Middle Ages. The authors highlight the philosophical, intercultural, and interreligious significance of the mentioned anthropological concepts. The article focuses on the comparability and consistency of the ideas of the Church Fathers and al-Ghazali. Particular attention is paid to Islam’s theoretical image of man as a caliph—a successor—of the Creator on the Earth. Comparative studies reveal the patristic vision of man, containing in himself the fullness of Divinity and humanity. The main points of the dyophysite Christian understanding of the God Incarnate in contrast to the monophysite currents of Apollinarianism are revealed. The depth of the Christological views of Athanasius of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor is presented. Al-Ghazali’s doctrine of man is substantiated as a conceptual understanding of man’s place in the system of the world created by God, which is seen as a holistic and systematized doctrine of humanity in Muslim philosophy. Conclusions are made about the comparability and the presence of intersections between Eastern Christian, Byzantine, and Muslim types of thought.

1. Introduction

Comparative philosophy makes it possible to put more objectively the question of dialogue of theological teachings and intercultural communication, as well as of religious–cultural identity, by analyzing different ways of perceiving other cultures and faiths. It is the philosophical understanding of man as a religious problem, in our opinion, that can unite different religious positions and theological views, revealing their genuinely humane and general cultural meanings. For instance, the Abrahamic religions are permeated by the intersection of cultures and various religious traditions. Thus, in its history, Muslim civilization reveals and cultivates both its “Western” face, as it contains elements of Judaism, Christianity, and Hellenism, and its “Eastern” face, diverging from the essence of these civilizational systems (Kraemer 1984; Rosenthal 1992). Examining this fact allows us to grasp the nature of religious humanism and the ideals of Muslim culture, which are linked to the attempt to humanize humanity and promote the discovery of human greatness. Likewise, early Christianity in Byzantium, drawing on the various theoretical and cultural sources of the ancient world, mythology, Platonism, and Neoplatonism, demonstrates the creative intersection of Western and Eastern cultural elements and religious ideas and elaborates a unique syncretic religious system. Considering the content of medieval Christian and Arab–Muslim philosophy, we can say that both of them represent a certain synthesis with the values of ancient philosophy, although, in each of them, the ratio and the proportion of these elements are different. The importance of ancient culture for the Muslim East is evidenced by the famous Greek–Arabic translation movement in the 8th–10th century (Gutas 1998). This is not about the practical utilitarianism of the era of the translation movement, which stimulated interest in medicine and natural sciences, and not about theoretical utilitarianism, which stimulated philosophical and religious research. We are meeting the fact that the translation movement was in the nature of the creative development of the Arab–Muslim culture itself. It is no coincidence that F. Rosenthal noted that this “translation activity was in the nature of a conscious creative act” (Rosenthal 1975, p. 12).

In this article, we seek to show how philosophical and religious understandings of the human being condition this gracious interplay of cultures and theologies. The works of the early Eastern (later–Byzantine) Church Fathers and al-Ghazali are combined by their profound knowledge of ancient philosophy. The Greek Fathers, during the periods of the triadic and Christological theological disputes, both criticized and appealed to Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas (Ramelli 2009). It is worth mentioning that Plotinus’ doctrine of the triad correlates quite harmoniously with the Christian triadology. A direction of Christian Neoplatonism even emerges in the early Byzantine period, evidencing the continuity of antiquity and Byzantism. In turn, al-Ghazali repeatedly adverted to Greek philosophy in his works. For instance, in his work Maqāsid al Falāsifa (The Aims of the Philosophers), he revealed the peculiarities of the philosophy of Eastern Peripatetics al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, and in the book Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), al-Ghazali conducted a critical analysis, showing that the Peripatetic philosophers were unable to reconcile the truths of theoretical and practical reasons. However, it is clear that al-Ghazali recognized antiquity as a part of Arab–Muslim culture. He was one of the most influential theologians and philosophers of Islam and has been considered an authority in both Western and Islamic philosophical traditions (Griffel 2015; Montgomery 1963).

«Al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) is one of the most influential thinkers of Islam. There is hardly a genre of Islamic literature where he is not regarded as a major authority. Islamic Law, Sufism, ethics, philosophy, and theology are all deeply shaped by him. Yet in the past thirty years, the field of Ghazālī-studies has been shaken by the realization that Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 428/1037) and other philosophers had a strong influence on him. Now, after the 900th anniversary of his death, the field emerges stronger than ever» (Islam and Rationality: The Impact of al-Ghazālī 2015, pp. i–xx). Therefore, in our opinion, ancient Greek philosophy contributed to the establishment of the intercultural connection between the ancient and medieval worlds, even if medieval authors rejected or criticized ancient thought at different periods.

The philosophical comprehension of man as a religious problem is based on answering the question of man’s place in the world and history as part of the appeal to God. The human in the religious picture of the world is seen as a creature of God. This does not mean, however, that he is merely a creature of God. The teachings of Christianity and Islam argue it is God who makes a man a person, revealing Himself in Holy history and elevating man above other created things (Kraemer 1984). Such a vision of the human being is inherent in Abrahamic religions, including the major Arab–Muslim philosophical trends: kalam, falsafa, Sufism, Ishraqi, and Isma’ilism (Arkoun 1982; Kirabaev 2011). The elevated understanding of man as a crown of God’s creation, responsible for himself and the human world before the Creator (John Climacus 1908), outlined in early Christianity, is further transmitted from generation to generation by theological doctrines and religious–anthropological concepts, determining the historical forms of culture and types of philosophizing (Stead 1994).

This article highlights some significant philosophical and theoretical constructions regarding a human as a spiritual and religious being. The mentioned constructs emerged during the classical formation of the Christian doctrine (4th–7th centuries) and in Islam within the framework of Sufism. The considered ideas of Athanasius of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, and al-Ghazali, in our opinion, have spiritual and semantic continuity and are actual enough in the ethical plan of our time. One of the most important examples of Muslim spiritual history is al-Ghazali, a Sunni Sufi Muslim. And whatever way the development of Arab–Muslim philosophy took since the mid-11th century, at all turning points in the history of Islam, it has always returned to the personality of al-Ghazali as the founder of the Sufi philosophical and theological system. No wonder he was awarded the honorific titles The Proof of Islam and The Revivalist of Faith.

The comparative analysis of the philosophical and anthropological concepts of Christian and Muslim thinkers discloses the religious and secular understanding of man concerning justifications for monotheism in Christianity and Islam. The Holy Trinity doctrine, elaborated by the Church Fathers, existing both in unity and in hypostatic manifestations of the three Persons, shaped the corresponding conceptual image of man, absorbing and reflecting the three-dimensionality of Christian monotheism. In Islam, with many ideological overlaps with the Christian vision of man, an anthropological doctrine was formed that correlates with the one-dimensionality of Muslim monotheism. The article traces common and specific descriptive characteristics in the theorizing of man, considered in terms of the noted differences between the monotheism of the two world religions.

One of the fundamental concepts of both Byzantine Church Fathers and Muslim thinkers (in particular, Al-Ghazali) is the philosophical idea of the perfect man, which found its reflection in the religious anthropology of both religions. The Byzantine Fathers proceeded from the perfection of the two natures of God–man Jesus Christ, which helped them elaborate on the doctrine of a man striving for perfection in the process of deification, following the example of Jesus. In Islam, the idea of human perfection is expressed more epistemologically as a means of cognizing the Creator and simultaneously grasping spiritual and moral values (in Sufism, for example, in its movement toward the One). For both Christianity and Islam, this idea of human perfection lies in epistemology. The way of God-cognition relates to the perfection of personality and the acquisition of spiritual and moral knowledge. In both cases, cognition of God is identical to self-knowledge and elevates man. In Christianity, this path is defined by theosis (deification, θέωσις) and the attempt to restore the lost Godlikeness, and in Islam, it is based on a common understanding of the hidden knowledge and the desire of every Muslim to comprehend it. The article shows how the idea of human perfection was realized in the ratio of God–man–world in ontological and epistemological terms from the perspectives of Eastern Patristics and Sufism. The comparative analysis thus allows us to deduce the peculiarities of the two understandings of God and man—early Christian and medieval Muslim.

We consider the understanding of man in the two world religions in philosophical and ethical terms. We focus on the fundamental ideas of a person striving for self-improvement, cognizing their own inner essence and knowledge of the Creator, an individual responsible for the existing world, and aiming to realize spiritual values in society. This view of man was characteristic of both Christian patristics and the Arab–Muslim philosophy of the Middle Ages. The vision of the human being in Christianity was directly linked to the dogma of the Incarnation, which was formed over three centuries, while in Arab–Muslim philosophy, the teachings of al-Ghazali became fundamental. It is on the basis of these theoretical premises that the article reveals the anthropological views of Athanasius of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, and Al-Ghazali. In a more specific consideration of man as an integral being uniting the corporeal and the mental, the spiritual, the natural, and the sacred,1 overcoming certain stages in the process of deification in Christianity and movement to the state of fanā’ in Islam2 we provide references to relevant published works of the authors of this article.

At the same time, the understanding of man in the teachings of the considered thinkers of Christianity and Islam is shown in the article as two methodological approaches to solving the most important philosophical problem of the God–world–man relation in both world religions. What Islam and Christianity have in common is that both religions focus on universal values directly related to the philosophical and anthropological vision of man’s position in the Universe with his existential gravitation toward God. The representatives of Eastern Patristics and the Arab–Muslim world revealed these universal values through the deep spirituality and religiosity of the man of the medieval age, preserving, however, the specificity and uniqueness of their worldview and their culture.

2. Human Being as Caliph in the Discourse of Islam and Partaker of the Divine World in the Context of the Formation of the Christian Doctrine of the Incarnation

Sacred history, as described in the Qur’an (The Holy Qur’an (Qur’an) 1990), is a series of covenants (عهد) between God and man, imposing certain obligations on people but suggesting that the Almighty regards man as a kind of comrade, a companion, a partner. Of course, man is not an equal companion or partner. It is a religious obligation for a Muslim to uphold his contract, which is a valid agreement. “O ye who believe! Fulfill [all] contracts…” (The Qur’an, 5:1). The covenant to God is seen as both a blessing and a responsibility in the Qur’an. In addition to this notion of ‘knowing’ and ‘remembering’ our oath to Allah, we are called to understand the responsibility of that oath to Allah, His prophets, and the Holders of Authority. At the same time, man’s position in Islam in relation to God differs significantly from that in Judaism and Christianity. The Bible says: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (NKJV, Gen 1:27). It is from the interpretation and argumentation of this provision that follows the Christian Christological teaching about the God–man (Incarnation of God), based on the understanding of the inseparable unity of the divine and human natures in Jesus Christ.

For Islam, such an understanding is simply impossible (e.g., Treiger 2011). The Qur’an notes: “(Remember) when your Lord said to the angels: ’Truly I am going to create man from clay’. So when I have fashioned him and breathed into him (his) soul created by Me, then you fall down prostrate to him” (Qur’an, 38:71–72). The Sunnah about the creation of Adam “in the image of God” says: “Allah created Adam in his image…” This is part of an authentic hadith narrated by Bukhari (No. 6227) and Muslim (No. 2841) from Abu Hurairah (Al-Bukhari 2002). This hadith implies that the phrase «Allah created Adam in His image» (إن الله خلق آدم على صورته) actually means “Allah created Adam in his own image”, in his form (على صورته). It does not mean that Allah and Adam share the same image, but rather that Allah created Adam according to his appearance. This indicates that the appearance of Allah and the appearance of Adam are one and the same. Thus, it is signified that God chose for man one of the many available formulas, “خليفة رسول الله”, (successor to the Messenger of God) or the title “خليف الله” (deputy of God), as God cannot have a “successor” in the literal sense of the word. The latter seems important enough since Islam lacks a mediator between God and man both as an idea and as an institution. Therefore, we are talking about the head of the Ummah (الأمة), the Muslim community. The Qur’an nowhere explains clearly whose “خليفة” a person should be. The Qur’an says: «And (remember) when your Lord said to the angels: “Verify, I am going to place (mankind) generations after generations on earth”. They said: Allah, “Will You place therein those who will make mischief therein and shed blood while we glorify You’re with praises and thanks and sanctify Your”. He (Allah) said: “I know that which you do not know” (Qur’an, 2:30). This verse of the Qur’an “خليفة” refers to a person who replaces God acting as a judge in disputes between his creations (خليفة مني ياهل وفيني في الحكمي بينا اهليه الحكميحكمي).

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111), the preeminent thinker and the most influential authority of the Muslim Middle Ages, outlined the way for further interpretation of the word “الخليفة” by suggesting the concept of an “inner interrelationship” (المناصب الباطنة ) between man and God. This conception not only made man love the Almighty but also made plausible the version about the appointment of Adam as a deputy of God on earth, not as a prophet, but as a simple man. In the “inner interrelationship”, al-Ghazali also found an explanation of the statement about the creation of Adam by God in his image, understanding by the latter the inner image as opposed to the external image.

In Christianity, the most important issue for the Abrahamic religious systems—man in his connection with God—received its orthodoxy in the dogma of the Incarnation of Christ, which was developed in Byzantium over the 5th to the 7th centuries in the theological polemic of Eastern and Western Patristics, and in the struggle of some Eastern Church Fathers against trends opposed to the Christian dyophysite doctrine.3 This was the formation of Christology, the creed of how to understand the God–manhood of Jesus Christ, and, in fact, the systematic formation of Christian theology as the church dogma of the Son of God who became, i.e., the incarnate man. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, … full of grace and truth” (John 1:14)—stemming from this evangelical thesis, the Eastern Fathers began to create Christology, which completed and then continued the truths of triadology (the dogma of the Holy Trinity) developed and fixed at the Council of Nicaea. Since the trinitarian dogma had already been perfected by the Church Fathers (e.g., Athanasius of Alexandria 2007b), patristics raised the question of justifying the fullness and absolute perfection of the two natures of Jesus Christ, divine and human (Gregory of Nyssa 2016).

We deem that without discussing the dogma regarding the God–manhood of Christ, the Homoousion (ὁμοούσιον) triadology (the unity of the three hypostases of the Trinity), so difficult to develop in the 4th century, could remain a scholastic doctrine with an understanding of God far from the mortal human world. Therefore, the argumentation of Eastern Church Fathers was directed not only at making dyophysitism as an affirmation of the two perfect natures in the unity of Jesus Christ but also at justifying the purposes of Christ’s appearance in the earthly world. Athanasius of Alexandria, who did outstanding work in formulating triadological and Christological dogmas, commented on the Incarnation of God: “The Son of God became a man to enable men, the sons of Adam, to become sons of God… Therefore, He called Himself the son of man, so men might call God their Father in heaven” (Athanasius of Alexandria 1994a, § 8, p. 257).

The Christological dogma determined the original setting of the question, first, about Jesus Christ Incarnate (which would not be recognized in Islam) and, second, about man as the mediator between the Divine and the created worlds, including in his inner world a part of the Divine nature, His image, and absoluteness. We may argue that it was with the polemic and discussion of the ideas of the Incarnation of God that the era of the construction of Christian culture as part of Byzantine civilization and religious anthropology as a special theoretical direction within Eastern Christianity began. The formation of the understanding of man in his relationship with God in Greek–Byzantine Patristics was directly linked to the development of Christological dogmatics.

The dogma of the God–man Jesus Christ (or of the Incarnation of the Son of God) was elaborated in the clash between some Eastern and, further, Byzantine Church Fathers and the religious–philosophical teachings of Apollinaris of Laodicea and his followers, but also those of Arianism, Sabellius, Nestorius, emerging monophysitism, and monothelitism. The power of ideas and doctrines, which did not recognize the equal, indivisible, and inseparable unity of Christ’s two natures, divine and human, came down from various positions and parts of the east of the former Roman Empire on the dyophysitism (the teaching of the two natures of Christ), which was breaking through.

Apollinaris of Laodicea (310–390) sowed a storm in the Christological debate and laid the foundation for Monophysitism as an affirmation of the existence of only one—divine—nature and one person in Jesus Christ. Apollinaris taught that in Christ, there was only the incarnate divine mind (Logos) present, and He lacked a human mind. The thinker held that the existence of two minds in Christ, with each mind’s distinctive action and will, would destroy the unity of the person and nature of the Son of God (Sidorov 1993, p. 13). Such Apollinaris’ views gave rise to a new trend in Christianity—monophysitism—the doctrine of only one nature and one person of Jesus Christ.

The monophysitism claimed to be an independent doctrine, forming within Christianity a separate Monophysite church. The theological and philosophical struggle of the Greek–Byzantine Fathers and some Eastern Fathers for a dyophysite understanding of the Incarnation of Christ kept them from fully accepting the monophysite doctrine (Florovskij 1992b, pp. 23–24). At the First Council of Constantinople in 381, the doctrines of Apollinaris and Arius were recognized as heretical. Prior, the First Council of Nicaea (325) rejected the Arius’ doctrine on the Son of God as the creation of the Father and, therefore, having the beginning. Athanasius argued with this affirmation. He wrote in his treatise On Luke 10:22 and Matthew 11:27: “As then the Father is not a creature, so neither is the Son; and as it is not possible to say of Him ‘there was a time when He was not,’ nor ‘made of nothing,’ so it is not proper to say the like of the Son either. But rather, as the Father’s attributes are Everlastingness, Immortality, Eternity, and the being no creature, it follows that thus also we must think of the Son” (Athanasius of Alexandria 2007a, § 4). It should be noted, however, that Apollinaris’ and Arius’ thought in the spirit of ancient Hellenism, trying to make Christology and Trinitarian dogmas logically consistent, which gave philosophical depth to the theological debates.

The struggle against Apollinarism caused the creation of a holistic Christological doctrine based not only on the Sacred sources of the Church but also on ancient philosophy and logic. The Church Fathers who upheld dyophysitism—Athanasius of Alexandria, the Cappadocian Fathers, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Maximus the Confessor, and the Antiochians Diodorus of Tarsus and John Chrysostom—contrasted Apollinarism with the doctrine of the two natures of Christ, and then of the two natures and volitions (divine and human), inherent in Christ as one in God the Father and one in mother. Theoretically creating the Christological system, the aforementioned Church Fathers defended the simultaneous real coexistence of both the common, i.e., the Ousia (οὐσία), nature of Christ, which unites him with God the Father, and its concrete manifestation in the individuality, i.e., in the hypostasis of Christ as the Savior. That presupposed the elaboration of an argument for the perfect fullness of both the Deity and the humanity of Christ. From the dogmatic explanation of the human nature of Christ, the most important anthropological statements about the salvation and deification of every mortal man, the meaning and purpose of man in this world, the possibilities of his knowledge, including cognition of God, the relationship between the human and the divine worlds also emerged. Jesus Christ, in the context of dyophysitism, was grounded in the Patristics as a model of absolute moral life, to some extent inherent in every person on earth.

After the Council of Constantinople of 381, the Eastern Church Fathers theorized the basic direction of the development of sacred theological thought at the following stage. They address questions about the specific relationship between the divine and human natures in the one hypostasis of Christ and about how the God–man Jesus Christ acts and wills. The Council of Chalcedon of 451 opened a new period of Christological disputes in the history of the Church, during which not only the inner but also the moral, anthropological, and logical interconnection between the two natures and the two actions and volitions in the one Person of the Son of God were discussed (Florovskij 1992a, pp. 24–28). In the process of theological debates, the crucial religious–philosophical theme matured considering the correspondence between the real and the divine world, achievable for righteous people in their earthly life course. Furthermore, the discussion of Christology touched upon such questions about the relationship between God and man as would later be raised in Islam, in kalam as speculative theology, in the teaching of Sufism about the three worlds and the possibilities of knowing the One, etc. (Kirabaev and Chistyakova 2020). The last part of our article is devoted to these questions.

The next section examines the particular ideas regarding the God–man and man coined by the Church Fathers Athanasius of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor, who fought for dyophysitism and conditioned the very specificity of the formation of Christian anthropology. These Church Fathers proceeded from the preceding Nicene tradition and determined its development in the following centuries of Christianity.

3. The Doctrine of Man as Mediator between the Divine and the Earthly Worlds by Athanasius of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor

Although Athanasius of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor defended dyophysitism and the profession of two actions and two wills in the single of Christ several centuries before al-Ghazali—one of the most significant representatives of medieval Muslim philosophy—some ideas of the Christian Fathers and the great Sufi intersect in some categories of culture and determine their philosophizing and the philosophical thinking of corresponding historical periods. We may compare the anthropological reasoning of the mentioned Church Fathers and al-Ghazali, the questions of cognition of God, the idea of man’s inner illumination with Divine light, and the presence of the Divine in the inner world of the individual.

Athanasius of Alexandria fought for the idea not merely of the Incarnation of God4 (Greek Manuscripts 1606) but precisely of the “incarnation” of Logos, i.e., the full perception by the Son of God of the psychophysical nature of man (e.g., Athanasius of Alexandria 2007c), was one of the first brightest representatives of Eastern Patristics who defined the main theme of the Christian anthropology. Through the grounding of the divine and human in Christ, he conveyed a new type of relationship between man and the Absolute, man and the other, and attention to one’s inner self and individual salvation (Athanasius of Alexandria 2007c, § 4). St. Athanasius outlined the theological tenets of the dogma of the God–man, which became decisive for Eastern Christianity and shaped an understanding of the relationship between “perfect man” and “perfect God” in one hypostasis of Jesus Christ. He develops the main theses of the Incarnation of God: the Son of God took all human nature except sin, and He became man (Athanasius of Alexandria 2007c, § 8). However, the human body was incarnated into the body of God with the assimilation of all carnal humanity to show the possession of a truly human nature (not just an anthropomorphic appearance). For Athanasius (as for the Byzantine Church Fathers), it was crucial to demonstrate God’s communion with humanity. Struggling with the Arians, he stresses this context: “Not the Word of God by grace took that to be called God; but His flesh together with Him is named God. It is not said, The Word became God, but: the Word was God (John 1:1), i.e., always was God the Word, and this same God became flesh so that His flesh might become God the Word” (Athanasius of Alexandria 1994a, § 3, p. 253).

At the same time, Christ is God, coessential with the Father, and this coessentiality is impossible for man. By his actions and his life on earth, the God–man manifests and extends (pours out) his unity with the Father to men. In the Word about the Incarnation of God-the Word and about His Epiphany, St. Athanasius writes: “The Word was pleased to make Himself visible, through the body, so that, becoming man, He might draw the attention of men to Himself, to divert their feelings to Himself, and when they see Him as man, by those works which He does, He will finally convince them He is not only man but also God, the Word, and Wisdom of the true God” (Athanasius of Alexandria 1994c, § 16, p. 211). Athanasius highlights the integrity of human nature, which can be as sinless as the nature of God Himself. The essential nature of the person of Christ is a unity of body and soul, of absoluteness and frailty, of higher meanings and their human realization, of transcendence and phenomenality. All this (apart from the unity with the Creator) is also possible in everyone since the Word of God has not just kenotically descended into man but has become him. St. Athanasius defines the basic purpose of Patristics as showing the enhypostasia of all humanity to God and the immanent belonging of each person to the divine world. By this, he conditioned the saintly tradition of considering the phenomenon of the God–man as the cherished ideal for every Christian in reaching the heights of spiritual unity with God on the path of deification.

In the context of Athanasius of Alexandria’s works on the Incarnation of God, one finds an important theme of the universal spiritual essence of all humanity, which would then become the subject of theorizing by the other Byzantine Fathers, in particular Gregory of Nyssa (ref. Gregory of Nyssa 2016). The divinity of Christ conditions the universality of human nature because absoluteness, spirituality, morality, and perfection bind all men together. God–manhood enables such unity based on high morality and pursuing deification and salvation through the inherent image of God in man. Through the perception of God’s flesh by the Word, human nature becomes “spirit-receiving”, accepting the Holy Spirit. Let us recall that Athanasius of Alexandria is considered the first theologian in the history of patristics to have developed a systematic doctrine of the Holy Spirit (e.g., Athanasius of Alexandria 1951). For this reason, his discussion of God–man includes statements about the power of the Spirit, which makes every person who perceives it a partaker of divinity, a glimpse of the “temple of God”. He writes: “…when we enlightened by the Spirit, it is Christ who in him enlightens us… Again, as Christ is true Son, so we, when we receive the Spirit, are made sons, it is clear that it is in Christ we are called children of God” (Athanasius of Alexandria 1951, pp. 111–12). St. Athanasius defends the position that while Christ reveals and sanctifies the way of theosis (deification) as the foundation of the universal essence of humanity, the significance of the Holy Spirit lies in the individual descent of each person as the gift of life. The universality of Christ and the individuality of the Spirit are inseparable, and thus the inner image of God, His wisdom, and the Divine light are inherent in every person. “But as the Son is Wisdom, so we, receiving the Spirit of Wisdom, have the Son and are made wise in him… But when God is in us, the Son also is in us… Furthermore, as the Son is life… we are said to be quickened by the Spirit… But when we are quickened by the Spirit, Christ himself is said to live in us” (Athanasius of Alexandria 1951, pp. 112–13). Therefore, the one hypostasis of Christ, who has received the Holy Spirit, is the absolute model, the supreme truth for the rational and religious man, ensuring the development of his wholeness. “For as the rational soul and flesh is one man, so God and man are one Christ” (Athanasius of Alexandria 1994b, p. 479).

At the Council of Chalcedon of 451, the Chalcedonian definition was elaborated. It expressed the creed of the God–man in the categories of apophatic thinking—two natures of Christ coexist in Him unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, and inseparably (Lossky 1991, pp. 108–9). After the Council, a new wave of Christological debates arose. The Egyptian theologians rejected the accepted formula of God–manhood. Monophysitism, which united numerous churches and their hierarchs, became the faith for many Syrians, Copts, Ethiopians, and Armenians who had not accepted the Hellenic tradition (Florovskij 1992a, p. 30). Monothelitism gradually emerged out of Monophysitism. These ideas would further become the linchpin of the theological debates among the representatives of the aforementioned churches and post-Nicene Fathers who upheld the dyophysite tradition.

In Chalcedonian Greek–Byzantine Patristics, Maximus the Confessor (580–662) became the center of the theological and theoretical discussions with Monophysitism and Monothelitism’ followers, as well as the creator of the original Byzantine Christological doctrine5 (Greek Manuscripts 1837). Continuing to discuss the coexistence of the two natures–actions and volitions in the one person of Christ, he worked to argue the problem that St. Athanasius of Alexandria had posed but failed to solve. Maximus the Confessor tried to justify how two opposite natures could belong to God the Word without violating the unity and indivisibility of the Son of God. St. Maximus writes: “… the most important: how does God become man? And most mysterious [of all]: how did the Word essentially remain in the flesh by hypostasis, being all entirely in essence and in the hypostatic image in the Father?… These sacraments are contained in faith alone, being the substance of things (Hebrews 11:1) beyond the mind and reason” (Maximus the Confessor 1993b, para. 13, p. 260). St. Maximus stresses the inclusion of human nature in the hypostasis of God the Word, justifying, in the spirit of the Eastern patristic tradition, the enhypostasia of all humanity to the Son of God (Maximus the Confessor 1993a, para. 66, p. 226, paras. 21, 25, p. 238). For the theologian, these ideas are the basis of the Incarnation of God with emphasis on the essential preservation of the fullness of the divine nature.

Maximus the Confessor speaks of the philosophical significance of human nature, both in the God–man and in each individual. This nature is bound up in the transfiguration, the illumination of humanity by divinity. As Christ’s humanity was transfigured, the essence of each individual is illuminated and transformed by the absoluteness and perfection of God’s nature. “The solid and sure foundation of the hope of deification for the nature of man is the Incarnation of God, which makes man a god in the measure in which God Himself became man” (Maximus the Confessor 1993d, para. 113, p. 276). In our opinion, St. Maximus theoretically creates a special image of human existence that correlates with the moral norms and spiritual values of society. According to St. Maximus, a special spiritual light as a reflection of the Divine, uncreated light is immanent in every person. Mystical uncreated light unites man and God and gives hope of comprehending the Creator in terms of religious gnosis (Kirabaev and Chistyakova 2020). The sublime idea of the God-given luminosity of man links the subtle anthropological mysticism of Maximus the Confessor with the sophisticated Sufism of Al-Ghazali.

Defending dyophysitism through logic, Maximus the Confessor insisted that the perfect Divine nature and perfect human nature of the incarnate Son of God inevitably follows the duality of His actions and wills, although the one exercising His will is the “One and Only”. This phenomenon is also descriptive of man—the same two wills are united in everyone (e.g., Maximus the Confessor 1993c, VI, p. 166, VII, pp. 167–69). Man’s free will, unlike God’s, is limited by choice. Choice is an attribute of human freedom, not inherent in Divine freedom. The Divine will—from creation inherent in man—always precedes the will of the individual. This is the guarantee that man acts according to the pattern of Christ’s life. St. Maximus shows that the equality, inseparability, and indivisibility of the two acts and wills of Christ predestine the realization of the will of man. This is the manifestation of the absolute freedom of God the Word. Christ’s perception of the grace of God the Father and the deification of the human will in Christ also “ensured” the deification of humanity. He writes: “For, not as God in essence and as the only begotten Son, coessential with God the Father, was graced, but as He who became man coessential with us by the Divine economy [of God] He was graced with it for us who need to grace. And we, in our [spiritual] prosperity, continually receive the corresponding grace from His fullness” (Maximus the Confessor 1993a, para. 76, p. 250).

For Maximus the Confessor, as for the Byzantine Patristics, the emphasis on the activity of man, on the manifestation of his will in salvation, and his spiritual ascent to the Creator in the process of deification, is descriptive (Chistyakova 2021). The absence of passivity, the focus on the spiritual activity component, and the departure from the idea of absolute Divine predestination (in contrast to the Western Patristics, where Augustine of Hippo’s views dominated in this context) is a peculiarity of the Greek–Byzantine Fathers’ way of contemplation. Georges Florovsky, who studied St. Maximus’ corpus, emphasized the context: “St. Maximus always makes a clear distinction between these two factors: nature and volition or will. Christ heals nature once and for all, without the actual participation of individual persons, and even independently of their possible participation—even sinners will be resurrected. But everyone must be liberated in a personal ‘ordeal’. Everyone is called to this liberation—with Christ and in Christ” (Florovskij 1992a, p. 220).

Thus, St. Maximus deduced the necessity of changing the nature and the will of man. The will was the source of Adam’s sin, and it is the will that must be transformed, made luminous, and directed to the path of man’s elevation to God. That is why recognizing the perfection of Christ’s two natures, actions and wills, not only solved the problem of the specifics of combining the seemingly incompatible but also marked the way of life of man himself, revealing the essence of his nature (Maximus the Confessor 1993d, para. 59, p. 261), and gave hope for human’s deification. As Maximus contends: “For it is clear that He who is made man without sin can also deify nature without putting it into Divinity, insofar as He elevated it to Himself, insofar as He humbled Himself for man’s sake” (Maximus the Confessor 1993d, para. 113, p. 276). Divinity and humanity are equally present in man—this is both the philosophical and theological interpretation of the Greek Father’s essence of man, signifying the wholeness and uniqueness of human nature.

This kind of elevated and philosophically argued comprehension of man in the Eastern Patristics of the Triadological and Christological debates was ideologically reflected in the medieval conceptualization of al-Ghazali. Let us scrutinize his philosophical and religious views on man.

4. Al-Ghazali’s Doctrine of the Human Being

The doctrine of the human being is an important part of the religious and philosophical teachings of al-Ghazali. His concept is distinguished by focusing on the issues of human existence in its various aspects: in relation to man to himself, to the world, and to God. In the conditions of domination of traditionalism and conservatism, with their requirement to consider only the letter of the sacred text as truth and answering all questions with traditional “do not ask how” (بلا كايف), al-Ghazali’s anthropology was an attempt to comprehend the place of man in the system of the world created by God and to give a comprehensive and systematized view of human being based on Sufi traditions.

At the heart of al-Ghazali’s doctrine is the doctrine of man’s communion with the divine. The latter is seen as the basis of the natural possibility to cognize the truth of things, the world, and God. A distinctive feature of the anthropology of the Muslim thinker is that epistemology is a defining part of his general doctrine of man. For instance, for al-Ghazali, the true existence of man is determined through cognition. It should be noted that inquiries on the possibility of divine cognition and human knowledge about God, the world, and man often turn into a meditation on the nature of different types of truth (الحقيق), in particular, the question about the true nature of man and his purpose in this world. Here, cognition occurs on two levels: cognition of the external world and self-cognition—cognition of the “original nature of man,” his self. The process of cognition, grasping knowledge (ادراك) in al-Ghazali means consideration of the God–world ratio, which is connected with his concept of the origin of the world, the God–man ratio, which makes up the doctrine of the soul, and the man–God ratio or the concept of fanā’ (فناء). The main doctrine defining the Muslim thinker’s view of the world and man is the doctrine of the three worlds. In the process of knowing the truth, man passes through three worlds. The first world is the “external”, transient, the world of sensuality (‘Alam al-Mulk wa-al-Shahada’ (“عالم الملك والشهداء”) the created world. This is the material world, the world of objects. It is opposed to the “inner” world, the world of the “hidden and otherworldly,” the higher world of ideas, the spiritual world of eternity, objectively displayed in the lower world of mulk (‘Alam al-Malakut— (عالم الملكوت). It is inaccessible to the senses and can only be comprehended through intuition, “inner vision”. Between these worlds is the intermediate world, the one of the “mediator” (‘Alam al-Jabarut, (عالم الجبروت)—the world of spiritual substances such as “will”, “power”, “knowledge” and divine forces, connecting the outer and inner worlds. All three worlds are in unity. The main feature of these worlds is their mirroring (Ignatenko 2004).6

That which, as a prototype, exists in ‘Alam al-Malakut, then resides in ‘Alam al-Mulk wa-al-Shahada’ in a multitude of imperfect specimens. “The world of mulk (الملك) is that which appears to the senses and is created by the power of the Almighty one from the other in the literal sense. The world of malakut (ملكوت) is that which the Almighty created by an eternal command, not gradually, it remains in the same state…” (Al-Ghazālī n.d.b, p. 27). “Jabarut (جباروت) is that between the two worlds: it is like the manifest that is in the mulk and is close to the eternal power from the world of malakut” (Al-Ghazālī n.d.b, p. 39). The world is not God, but neither is it something different from God.

According to al-Ghazali, pantheistic ideas are not applicable to Islam and Sufism. For this reason, he was critical of the Sufism followers who shared them, and in particular criticized Mansour al-Hallaj (858—executed 922), who in one of his contemplations exclaimed: “انا الحق” (“I am the Truth”). Al-Hallaj publicly proclaimed the path of ecstatic union with God as the only true one, requiring no external ceremonial actions. Al-Ghazali, in a polemic with al-Hallaj, denied the possibility of the ontological unity of God and man. Applying the symbol of the mirror, he interpreted the world only as a copy of the true transcendent world, in which divinity is not its essence but only leaves some trace. The cosmos is a strict hierarchy of worlds arranged and passing from one to another. And the highest world passes into the divine one, i.e., the structure is descending: Allah–malakut–jabarut–mulk. This is reflected in the doctrine of the origin of all that exists. The relationship between the lower and higher worlds is considered by al-Ghazali in terms of similarity as a mirror reflection of the existing higher, true world (تمزيل) in the lower, transient world. Many people live in this world without realizing that it is a world of shadows. And only those, al-Ghazali believes, who embark on the path of knowledge of truth and self-improvement can grasp it (Al-Ghazālī n.d.c, pp. 31–32).

In considering the terms “heart”, “spirit”, “soul”, and “mind”, al-Ghazali argues that they have two meanings simultaneously: one in the material world and the other in the divine. On the one hand, they coincide, and on the other, they are infinitely divergent when applied to God and to the created world (Tamer 2015). While different in meaning in the material world, these terms coincide in their second meaning, denoting the “divine light” in man, which awakens in him the longing to know the truth. This is a unique trait of human nature. The knowledge of truth is man’s mission and the basis of his perfection, without which eternal enjoyment is impossible. If man does not try to comprehend the truth, then he degrades to the level of animals, while the cultivation of knowledge allows him to rise to the level of angels. Al-Ghazali believes that, for various reasons, not all people can fulfill this ability. But he always emphasizes that the way to knowledge is open to everyone, for everyone possesses “divine light”. Al-Ghazali accented that in the process of cognition, an important role is played by human self-improvement, which does not mean forgetting the human beginning and assertion of the divine (Treiger 2012).

Al-Ghazali regards the heart as a “polished mirror” reflecting divine intimate knowledge. The purified and polished heart of a Sufi shows that he is on the highest spiritual stage of enlightenment and is, therefore, open to the perception of divine inspiration. Such “inspiration” affords the unique capacity for direct and instantaneous knowledge of the truth. Importantly, the mirror is always shining, radiating light, illuminating. Al-Ghazali views the mirror as a light source in The Niche of Light. The heart is a mirror in which the images of the two worlds are reflected. Indeed, within an allegorical interpretation, the mirror is a metaphor for understanding the process and the result of this process. The reflection of a person in a mirror is the likeness or image-form of that person. “The believer is the mirror of the believer; in the shortcomings of the other he sees his own shortcomings” (Al-Ghazālī n.d.d, p. 22). Moreover, al-Ghazali views the “perfect man” as the mirror of God and the matrix of the world because God is both immanent and transcendent to the carnal world.

In his account of the history of the contest between the Byzantine and Chinese artists, who argued before some king over who of them was better at drawing or “making images”, al-Ghazali shows the different ways of reaching the truth by the philosophical (rationalist) scholars and the Sufi saints. We are talking here about the truths of reason and the truths of faith as two sides of the One Truth. To uncover who the best artists were, a certain king gave them a portico, one side of which was to be painted by the Chinese and the other by the Byzantines. Between them was a curtain that prevented each side from peeking at the other. The Byzantines collected countless outlandish paintings. But the Chinese came with no paints at all. They began to grind and polish their side. The Byzantine and Chinese artists simultaneously announced the completion of their work. However, the king was astonished by this announcement on the part of the Chinese artists, expressing bewilderment at how it was that they painted with no paints at all. They were asked, “How is it that you have finished but have not used a single color?” They replied, “Don’t worry about it. Raise the curtain”. It was lifted, and the wonders of Byzantine art shone with even greater brightness and radiance, for the Chinese artists turned their side into a polished mirror. The beauty of their side surpassed that of the Byzantines because the mirror shone (Al-Ghazālī n.d.d, pp. 22–24). According to al-Ghazali, the works of the Byzantine artists represent discursive and sensual knowledge. The Chinese artists symbolize those who purify their hearts so that inspiration may enter (Al-Ghazālī n.d.d, p. 63). Al-Ghazali’s knowledge of God is not theoretical but intimate, knowledge of being and presence, of intuitive insight. Through their hearts, Sufis feel God, both immanent and transcendent to the world.

The assertion that “Allah created Adam in his image” is interpreted by al-Ghazali: “By His image is meant the big world as a whole. Man was created in the likeness of the big world, but he is a smaller version of it. If by means of knowledge we divide the big world into parts and divide Adam into his parts in the same way, it will appear that the constituent parts of Adam … will be like the constituent parts of the big world, and if the parts of one set are like the parts of another, then these two sets undoubtedly resemble each other. Thus, the big world is divided into two parts. One of which is the manifest, perceived by the senses, namely, the world of mulk. The other is the inward, perceived by the mind, namely, the world of malakut. Man is also divided into the manifest, perceived by the senses, as flesh, bones, blood, and all kinds of sensually comprehended entities, and the internal, as spirit, mind, knowledge, will, power, and the like” (Al-Ghazālī n.d.b, p. 15).

The God–man–world relation is developed by al-Ghazali in the idea of a close relationship between cosmology, anthropology, and psychology. “Know that you are in three worlds and of each a part is in you” (Al-Ghazālī n.d.a, p. 49). An important place in Sufi’s anthropology is taken by the idea of the correspondence between the world and man. Like the world, man is divided into inner and outer, inferior, and superior. The body is compared to the world of the sensual, manifested, and tangible, the transient. The soul is compared to the world of the eternal, the immutable, the higher, and the intuitively comprehensible. Al-Ghazali compares the emotions in the human chest to the intermediate world of jabarut, the mediating world. The soul connects with the body through emotion, but, in fact, it is a “stranger in this world” (Al-Ghazālī n.d.a, p. 49). The divine nature of the individual—his spirit—constitutes the higher world. The mentality belongs to the spiritual and the body—to the material worlds.

However, according to al-Ghazali, the similarity is not only external, attributive, explicitly manifested. In the process of cognition, it is necessary to focus on a deeper–inner–similarity, “meaning not similarity in image or form, but the similarity in relation to the soul” (Al-Ghazālī n.d.d, p. 298). Believing that the soul is the essence of man, al-Ghazali views it from two perspectives: the soul as “self”, “higher self”, the quintessence of man, and the soul as something spiritual, the opposite of the body as a material element.

Considering the relationship between soul and body, al-Ghazali notes that the existence of the soul is self-sufficient, while the body depends on the soul for its existence. The soul is united with the body so that man may become aware of his divine essence and take responsibility for it. The soul, united with the body, must always strive to preserve its purity, dominate the struggle against the animal side of man, suppress the basest passions, and control desires. Evil arises not because it is inherent in human nature but because of a violation of the correspondence between the “human” and the “divine”. The soul is originally deprived of all knowledge but can master it. Without knowledge of the truth of things, of the world, and of God, man is incapable of confronting evil. Although the human body is connected to the lower world, because of its inseparable connection with the soul, it is related to the higher world, and therefore the body cannot be considered absolute evil. Al-Ghazali’s doctrine of the soul highlights how in the process of knowledge of truth, there is a “purification of the soul” which leads to the comprehension of the higher truth. The process of cognition of truth is also seen as the process of man’s union with God in the state of fanā’.

It is not the only thing to note that al-Ghazali’s “unity” cannot be understood literally. He regards it as an intentional, spiritual, rather than a spatial or temporal state. Here “we are talking about the self-improvement of personality. It means man’s movement in the process of cognition according to his state and the stage of being. Speaking of the highest stage on the path of self-perfection, al-Ghazali believed that man contemplates only the other… Thus, man contemplates the One and cannot contemplate himself as a person, for from the moment he plunges into his own consciousness, he disappears for himself. Yet again, immersion cannot be understood literally but must be seen as immersion in knowing God, i.e., epistemological, intentional immersion” (Chistyakova et al. 2019, pp. 166–67) since the One is incomprehensible in principle. For al-Ghazali, the purposeful intention is important since fanā’ is perceived as the orientation of human consciousness toward God. Reaching the state of fanā’, a man becomes transfigured, highly moral, possessing true knowledge of morality and religious truth. One may say that it is in this state that the idea of the perfect man, formulated by al-Ghazali, is realized. Fanā’ thus gains a moral character in Sufi’s works and is in direct connection with Muslim ethics.

5. Conclusions

The analysis of some philosophical–anthropological and theological teachings of the representatives of Greek–Byzantine Patristics and Sufism makes it possible to assert that, despite the centuries-long gap, the ideas of these thinkers concerning the God–man–world relation are comparable in content and axiological terms. The Greek–Byzantine Patristics, within the framework of theological disputes of the 4th–7th centuries, created a theological and a philosophical discourse, which allowed subsequent generations of Christian theologians and medieval Muslim theorists to adopt the most important provisions of their doctrines (Treiger 2011) and create original teachings on man in a personal relationship with the Creator. One of the most important sources both for the Christian theologians and Muslim thinkers, was the Ancient Greek philosophy which had presented them a rich categorical apparatus and philosophical ideas for reflexive and creative usage. Particularly, Platonism and Neoplatonism played a significant part in shaping the Byzantine theology (Lilla 1997; Karamanolis 2021; Chistyakova and Chistyakov 2023). Aristotle’s philosophical legacy also influenced the elaboration of Trinity and Christology doctrines in the Early Christian period. At the same time, the philosophy of Aristotle and Peripatetics was increasingly valuable for the medieval Arab–Muslim tradition.

We have traced sufficient intersections in the concepts of man in Eastern Christianity and Islam, particularly in Sufism, which allows us to speak of points of contact between these cultures on a fundamental issue—namely, in the vision of man as being in spiritual unity with God. The common trait in the understanding of the religious man, who strives to acquire sacred knowledge about the Almighty, was also realized in the theoretical differences between Holy Fathers’ doctrines and medieval Muslim philosophy. In Christianity, human ideals were formulated in connection with the orthodox vision of Christ’s Incarnation and the perfect features of Jesus as the God–man, who showed humankind a model of absolute morality. In Islam, the focus of humanity’s conceptual conditioning was on the epistemological plane—the perfect man had to comprehend the unity of the Creator and, as Allah’s deputy on earth, follow rigorously the rules and moral norms that had been developed. Ethics and spiritual values are historically embedded in both religions, but the philosophical grounding of man in Eastern Patristics and Sufism contributed to the development of original types of monotheistic knowledge of God.

These conceptual crossroads of cultures and religions are not archaic and have not remained somewhere in late antiquity or the Middle Ages. Thus, a reflexive analysis of al-Ghazali’s anthropological teachings contributes to a deeper understanding of the traditional Islamic worldview and discloses the social nature of contemporary Muslim humanistic doctrines. Reflection of the philosophical and anthropological ideas of Eastern Patristics thought reveals the undiscovered theoretical sources of Byzantine culture and unveils the continuity of the views of Byzantine and Old Russian thinkers. In both cases, the ideas of Christian and Muslim authors contribute significantly to the treasury of modern philosophy and the spiritual cultures of the two world religions.

That suggests the promise of a comparative study of the theological and philosophical ideas of the Greek–Byzantine Church Fathers and thinkers of the Arab–Muslim East (al-Ghazali in the presented paper) from the perspective of further establishing a dialogue between the two religions and the two philosophical cultures. The common features and peculiarities of these traditions are a unique source for an in-depth theological–philosophical analysis of the patristic texts and works of al-Ghazali both from the synchronic point of view, “as it were frozen in time”, and diachronic “in terms of its evolution over time” (Chandler 2002, p. 12) study.