Theodicy and the Resurrection of the Dead

The Writings of Said Nursi

By Fr. Leo Lefebure

From Bulletin 78, January 2007

MID Advisor and Georgetown Professor Leo D. Lefebure reports on an international conference dealing with the work of Turkish Islamic spiritual leader and scholar, Said Nursi.

On November 19 and 20, 2006, The Istanbul Foundation for Science and Culture sponsored an international conference on the theology of Said Nursi (1877-1960), a major Muslim leader in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic. The workshop focused on Nursi’s views on theodicy and the resurrection of the dead in relation to other Abrahamic perspectives. A variety of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars from Turkey, Europe, the United States, Canada, the Middle East, and Singapore gathered for two days of intense discussions. Catholic participants included Thomas Michel, SJ, who has represented the Society of Jesus worldwide in interreligious relations for many years and who has written a book, Said Nursi’s Views on Muslim-Christian Understanding(Istanbul: Söz Basim Yayin, Ltd, 2005), Gerhard Boewering, SJ, a professor of Islamic Studies at Yale University, and myself.

Said Nursi
Nursi was educated in both traditional Islamic studies and the modern science coming from Western Europe and hoped to integrate both forms of knowledge into a new university structure in eastern Turkey, where he was originally from. He so impressed other scholars with his learning that he became known as “Bediuzzamen,” the “wonder of the world.” He participated actively in the political discussions concerning a constitution for the Ottoman Empire and was a regimental commander of a militia during World War I until he was captured by the Russian army and held as a prisoner of war. After the war, as the Ottoman Empire was in the process of collapsing, Nursi went through a deep spiritual crisis, provoked by the massive death and destruction of the war and the uncertainty of the future. Nursi came to a resolution of the crisis through a renewed faith in the teaching of the Qur’an concerning the resurrection of the dead and by following the example of Muhammad. Nursi came to see death as a demobilization, a dismissal from the duties of this world, and a caravan journey to another world, where the injustices of this world will be righted. Recognizing that all too often in this world goodness goes unrewarded and evil unpunished, he trusted that God would hold a Supreme Tribunal in which justice would triumph.

In the 1920s, Nursi declined Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s offer of a position in government, withdrew from political and military activities, and remained a spiritual leader for the rest of his life. As Ataturk and his followers sought to secularize and modernize Turkish life by severely restricting the role of Islam, Nursi became a leading representative and defender of the Islamic heritage of the nation. He spent many years in isolated areas under a form of house arrest and was repeatedly accused by prosecutors of using religion to stir resistance to the government. He dictated reflections on the Qur’an, which were collected and copied by his followers. For many years these circulated illegally from hand to hand. Nursi understood his reflections to come from God and thus did not see himself as the author of these commentaries claiming instead that the Qur’an was interpreting itself through him for the twentieth century. His reflections frequently propose new parables and metaphors to clarify the significance of Qur’anic teachings.

The election of a new government in 1950 brought an easing of his circumstances, but some in government continued to harass him right up to his death in 1960. His writings were eventually published as Risale-I Nur. Currently, a number of Islamic groups in Turkey and beyond, collectively known as the Nur movement, revere the memory of Nursi, study his writings, and seek to broaden awareness of his contribution. Fatih University in Istanbul is inspired by his example. Nursi’s followers look to him as a spiritual and intellectual guide on how to practice Islam in the modern world. He defended the rights of Jews and Christians to participate in the political life of the Ottoman Empire, and thus is seen as a harbinger of better interreligious relations.

The International Conference
At the conference in Istanbul, some scholars focused on a particular aspect of Nursi’s theology, such as his view of death or his arguments and analogies in favor of the resurrection. Others compared and contrasted him to various thinkers, such as Moses Maimonides, Al-Ghazzali, Dante Alighieri, Bertrand Russell, C.S. Lewis, and Matahhari (1919-1979), an Iranian theologian, who resisted the government of the Shah of Iran and was assassinated months before the Iranian revolution. Hashim Al-Tawil, an art historian originally from Iraq now teaching in Michigan, illustrated the background of Nursi’s thought in the aesthetic traditions of the Abrahamic religions. Al-Tawil showed images of the four creatures who appear to Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible, noting that Christians associated these with the four evangelists, while Muslims saw them as bearers of the throne of God until the Final Judgment.

Oliver Leaman compared Nursi’s thought to Moses Maimonides, suggesting that the problem of suffering has played a wider role in Jewish thought than in Islamic theology. Leaman noted that Nursi sees God recording every good or evil act in this world; Nursi trusts that justice will prevail in the final judgment in the afterlife, believes that unjust suffering in this world will be recompensed, and thus accepts suffering in this world as being in accord with God’s will and providence. Jewish thought, in contrast, is more varied and often more conflicted. For example, he commented, Maimonides is not certain that God knows individual actions in this world since God is radically transcendent of this world. Maimonides also cautions that we do not know what divine justice looks like and thus cannot project our understanding of justice onto God. Where Nursi has a strong faith in God’s individual providence and the resurrection of the dead, Maimonides viewed the afterlife as, in Leaman’s words, “a form of thought rather than a place, and abstract thought at that, so that in the next world we survive, in so far as we do survive, as thinking about abstract and eternal topics, without bodies and bearing no resemblance to us as we are in this life.” Leaman also noted that the Hebrew Bible is far less clear on an afterlife than is the Qur’an and that the Talmud, while clearer than the Hebrew Bible, nonetheless contains conflicting perspectives.

Barbara Stowasser of Georgetown University explored the background of Nursi’s theodicy in the differing perspectives on Adam and Eve in the Bible and the Qur’an and the later Abrahamic theological traditions, with attention to gender. She noted that in the Qur’an God creates Adam “to make him God’s viceregent (khalifa) on earth (2:30),” granting him creative knowledge of the names of other creatures, a gift not given to the angels. When God commands the angels to honor Adam for his knowledge, Iblis (Satan) refuses to do so and becomes an adversary of humans, tempting them to sin until the Day of Judgment. Iblis later tempts Adam and his wife (who is not named by the Qur’an—Mary the mother of Jesus is the only woman called by her own name), and they sin by eating the fruit of a Tree and are banished from the garden of paradise. Later on, the medieval Muslim tradition developed various interpretations that had a very negative view of women; such perspectives shaped much of pre-modern Muslim literature. However, Stowasser stressed, many more recent Muslim scholars, including Said Nursi, rejected the authority of the medieval expansions and insisted that the Qur’an teaches the full personhood of women and the equal moral responsibility of both men and women. Nursi understood God’s appointment of Adam as viceregent to include all humanity, male and female, and he sees Adam’s wife as his equal.

In my paper I compared Said Nursi’s views on the resurrection of the dead to those of Jürgen Moltmann. Both theologians were profoundly impressed by the goodness of creation and the ambiguities of modernity, with its technological ability either to enhance life or destroy it. Like Nursi, Moltmann fought in a world war of tremendous destruction, was captured, and went through a painful life crisis after the war. For both thinkers, faith in the resurrection of the dead was decisive in the resolution of the crisis, offering them a way to affirm belief in God’s justice even in a world of massive violence and cruelty.

For Moltmann, the cry of Jesus from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”, was decisive. If the Son of God knows what it feels like to be abandoned by God, then he can understand Moltmann’s own pain and despair. Moltmann came to believe that Jesus’ descent into hell leads to the eventual reconciliation of all sinners, including the most violent. Nursi, like the Islamic tradition in general, believes that Jesus was not crucified, and does not allow for the possibility of universal salvation.

Ibrahim Abu Rabi’ of Hartford Theological Seminary, was instrumental in organizing the conference and is editing the papers for a volume to be published by the State University of New York Press.

 

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