The Relationship of God with the Universe in the System of Thought of Aristotle and Avicenna

The issue of the “relationship of God with the universe” in the system of thought of Aristotle and Avicenna is the question dealt with in the present study. The article tries to support the idea that the views of these two peripatetic philosophers with regard to this issue are different. Relying on the natural cause and the concept of movement, Aristotle accomplishes to prove the existence of an ultimate stimulus which he calls essence and his commentators God. From his perspective, essence is the ultimate cause of all possible movements in the universe. On the other hand, from Avicenna’s perspective, God is considered the necessary being from whom the existence of the universe is derived. views God as the ultimate cause but his causality is instigatory while Avicenna views the causality as existential rather than instigatory. Dividing the existents into the necessary and the possible and proving the contingency of the existent possibilities to the necessary being, Aristotle provided an innovative model for the relationship of God and the universe with the feature that contingent existence is continually in need of the grace of the creator. According to Aristotle, God is not the creator of the universe and is unaware of its existence. While according to Avicenna, God possesses the ultimate knowledge of the universe. The present article presents a comparative study of the philosophical theology of these two peripatetic philosophers to show the supremacy of Avicenna’s theology.