Reason and Revelation in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and the Ashʿarī Tradition

What is the relation of reason to revelation? How do rational truths relate to truths in scripture? Does the Quran assert theological truths (“God exists”) in the same manner as it prescribes legal commands (“wine is forbidden”)? How do the texts of the Quran and Sunna convey such truths? This article reconsiders the status of reason and revelation in the Ashʿarī-Sunnī tradition, the prevailing school of theology in the premodern Islamicate world.1 The analysis focuses on what I term the “Ashʿarī theory of evidence” (dalīl) and its underlying epistemology, which, I argue, provides the operative definitions of reason and revelation for an influen- tial line of thinkers, from Bāqillānī (d. 1013) to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210). Rāzī provides a systematic account of the Ashʿarī approach in two influential prin- ciples defining the relation of reason to revelation (labeled P1 and P2 below).2 Put concisely, Rāzī asserts that (P1) “scriptural texts do not impart certitude whatsoever”