Sacred Texts

Any religion founded on the belief that God communicates with creatures must eventually consider the relationship between God and God's word or speech. Since Muslims consider God to be the "speaker" of the Koran, the text is therefore defined as God's speech (kalaam Allah). However, God's speech cannot be external to God or accidental, but belongs to God's essence. It is, therefore, uncreated and, according to some, eternal. Beginning in the late eighth century much attention, and for a time an inquisition, came to be focused on the questions of whether, and if so in what sense, the Koran text itself is uncreated. Although one still hears echoes of the Mu'tazilite school of thought that denied the Koran is uncreated, the question of its uncreated nature has been resolved virtually unanimously in the positive. However, the question of in what sense the Koran is the uncreated speech of God was never firmly resolved and remains important even in the early twenty-first century.

There are several reasons for wanting to maintain a distance between the words of the Koran and the eternal speech of God. The first is to safeguard the otherness and immateriality of God and avoid the risk of anthropomorphism. Another is the logical need to recognize the historical particularity of many of the Koran's revelations. A third would be to avoid the idea that in the act of recitation the reciter of the Koran becomes completely identified with God (hulul).

At the same time, to distance the Koran too much from God risks undermining its authority and its value as "guidance for the God-fearing" (2:2). It risks reducing it to a merely human document, thus opening too much latitude for interpretation, and diminishing its value as a clear foundation for the law.