A Conversation with Miroslav Volf and Hamza Yusuf

so my name is Miroslav Volf I teach theology here at Yale University I direct the Yale Center for faith and culture and part of that our effort is a program on life worth living in its conjunction with the program like called life worth living that we have with us guests for today a very prominent Muslim scholar and president of site Oona College in Northern California welcome thank you our conversation is going to be about what makes life worth living great philosophical traditions but also great religions at least it seems to me have placed this question of the nature of human human nature and human destiny at the heart of their endeavors would that be true of Islam I think that it's it's fundamental to the religion there's there's a verse in the the chapter known as the be nod I think it's 97th verse where the it's the verse says that whoever does good deeds whether male or female and is a believer we will bring them to life in a good life and and it literally says hayatun tayyiba like a good life and at but it's God who is bringing that life about and and and so the two the two fundamental keys to that good life are faith and deeds and and this is you know this was a big debate in Christianity as you know justification yeah but and in Islam interestingly enough justification is through faith alone according to the dominant but deeds are necessary and and so then then it comes to what is faith and what are good deeds right right right yeah and as you mentioned this kind of debate was going on and still in some ways is going on but in Christianity today kind of various schools so the good life or the flourishing life life worth living it consists of deeds what are the deeds what what kind of agency do we need to exert well to live or lead a good life I think one of the things if for many people now in the West I think and and around the world I think a good life is associated with a pleasurable life and certainly if you go back even to the Greek period Aristotle's in in the Nicomachean ethics he talks about the necessary components of a good life wealth is one of them having a modicum of wealth that enables you to do what you want and certainly we we see that it gives you a certain type of freedom and then and then he talks about friendship that has a whole chapter on friendship was very interesting because to have a good life certainly friends it would seem would be included in that and any talks also about virtue and a contemplative life and I think the 10th chapter to me is the most interesting because it's almost like he doesn't really ever get to what he's really talking it's almost as if it's it's it's a hidden tradition that he's just hinting at in there but I ever for Muslims that is the key to a truly good life is a contemplative life there has to be meditation on reality and and and and that and that meditation on reality by nature is going to engender good deeds so so in our style there are these two components or circumstances of life right as you mentioned wealth friends maybe hell because the bill health of a person place is very significant significant role as does the agency of human beings so in terms of Islam you would say the the the good life may be possible under all sorts of circumstances but actually or people may may find that they they can they can lead the responsible human life and there are all sorts of circumstances but actually what we ought to strive for is to have a certain level of circumstances which make the human life possible in in the piranha I think it's very clear that circumstances are not necessary because for instance right now in Syria is a good example whether it's incredibly war-torn despite that fact there are people in the midst of that that are in a state with of submission because we can't determine our circumstances but we can determine our responses to our circumstances and and I think that is the essential meaning if you really truly believe no matter what God throws at you like job you know I you've been the part on no matter what God throws at you you do not question God and and this for the Muslim this is absolutely essential that the verse in the Quran that says God will not be asked about what he does but you will be asked about what you do and I think this might be a fundamental difference certainly with the Jewish tradition and the Islamic tradition is that that submission really is a submission it's not to say that you know that God that we can't in our in ourselves ask questions it's it's it's not that but it's a type of submission to whatever God throws at me my my response is what I'm going to be asked about is that is that closer than say I think about splice ISM that you can you can have a kind of circumstances your own state of the good life or flourishing is independent of circumstances and the goal is to make it as much independent as possible so that you can have this independence notwithstanding what surrounds you I think there's definitely a relationship between Islam and stoicism I mean there are people that have argued that Muslims took things from the Stoics I I don't think that's a sound historical argument but I think the Stoics it's interesting me that the Stoics the two great philosophers of Stoicism one of them was a slave and the other was an emperor and and i just find that very intriguing that that maybe maybe at the emperor was as much of a slave as the slave and slave was as much of an emperor as the and I think the Stoics would definitely look at it like that that the circumstance you do not we did I didn't choose the family I came into my family was highly educated so that enabled me for instance my language skills are just going to be naturally better because I grew up listening to articulate parents I didn't choose those yeah so each one of us gets circumstances that we're given but what we do with those circumstances this is what is going to determine the the merit or the medal of our character but but how about in Islam there are certain legal provisions certain even political vision certain economic kind of strictures that ideally ought to characterize or we aspire for them to characterize societies because they make devotion more likely or expression of the devotion so that there is a there is a creation of circumstances or I'm asking know that creates or that fosters phaidor's I think well you're absolutely right that that we are challenged and really in in it quite literally commanded by God to exert our efforts in bringing about circumstances that are going to make the good life possible and and certainly Medina is an example of that Mecca was persecution the Prophet fled salata sanim fled to Medina and set up an environment the first thing he did was he established a free market and what's interesting about Islam to me is it's the last economic religion I mean we know that in early Christianity one of the major debates in early Christianity was about faith and wealth and yet I rarely hear Christians talking about for instance usury despite the fact that it was considered a mortal sin all the way until the 19th century exactly like you went to hell and they wouldn't even bury users in Christian cemeteries usury is still a very vital element in Islam I mean very devout Muslims will not buy houses in America because they won't take the mortgages to do that so people take that very seriously they're very afraid of in any way violating certain aspects of commercial law in Islam and and commercial law is probably one third of the Sharia is about commercial law yeah well the debates about usury in Christianity that they're originally they're motivated that every time you require interest you put the person who has borrowed from you deeper into into a whole in many respects and so to protect it I think it was exactly and still continues to be well regarded exploitation of people also poor people on even Calvin if you look at when when and and the bankers actually erected a monument to Calvin in Geneva I think but but when you look even Calvin he only allowed a user II what he called interest with people that that could afford it but and with could be productive and it was and he put a cap I think on three percent it was it was very small it's a very important discussion in general to have today given the levels of debt in all over the world and debt is a form of slavery indentured servitude so um you know even in the United States I mean debtors prisons we're very common in in the West and especially poor suffering and disproportionately high absolutely I mean payday loans which which the banks often like Wells Fargo back America these banks have paid they also cater to that that element so I mean for me I really feel like one of the fundamental rights of children is to be born debt-free and and you cannot wear sixteen trillion dollars in debt in the United States I don't see how a good life can be sustained in this country because eventually that debt is going to fall due and and every if you read for instance Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations that last chapter on public debt no civilization has survived a public debt and and you know the other thing about a good life for me is entertainment because I really feel want one of the humans love to be entertained and and the prophet Mohamed Salah TSM was once saw some some people going to a wedding and he said is there entertainment and and so what's called laho and and and we need respite from the world right both spiritual respite but also just pleasurable respite from the world and that's why singing was so important in in in most religious traditions like the Sufis put a lot of emphasis on singing right well in Schad what to go and shed and and that one of the things that I find increasingly difficult for people in this country is the degrading nature of our entertainment culture and I think one of the most important things to live a good life for me is human dignity and and just because what you mean you mean to have a sense of dignity or to actually have the kinds of circumstances instantiated also in laws that would make sure that the dignity of every person is in fact preserved I think both though I think the human being we have to see who we are we're not animal you know I hear a lot of people say this interesting thing we're just animals you know there's a lot of people that make that claim just is the problem in this in this phrase exactly we are part animal but we have something that clearly distinguishes us not in in in kind you know but but but actually in the genus you know we we we we are we are we have an immaterial component and despite whatever neurologists and neuroscientists say nobody has pinpointed consciousness and and and and that is simply a fact it is a biological fact nobody can pinpoint conscious we know that there's mechanisms that enable consciousness but consciousness itself is an immaterial reality and therefore we we are you know the highly morphic if you want to use Aristotelian terms we're body and soul and and one of the things that NASA did Deena through C and his book on ethics says is when he says first let us establish the the existence of the soul and he said this is not a debatable point because even the drunkard in his drunkenness even the sleeper in his sleeping is aware of himself so let's take this awareness of ourselves whichever way we want to want to code it the Islam emphasizes significance of the knowledge knowledge primarily of God significance of remembrance of God memory of significance of being conscious of God and would it be would it be true to say that one of the main features of our own agency vis a vie the good life is the knowledge of God you mentioned earlier from that knowledge of God from this relationship to God other things flow can you talk about what this knowledge of God means knowledge of God is is it there's a knowledge of God that is theoretical in Islam that for instance if you were outside of Islam you could learn it as a theologian so you could learn dogmatic theology in Islam you could even learn the natural theology of doctrines you learn these things actions about God God has no place God is outside of time and space God has is simple you know there's no compound he's not complex or Congress you very similar Aquinas is very close to the Islamic presentation of God so you can learn all that but there's another element and this is what gazali said ultimately faith is not doctrine what is faith faith is something that he said it's it's something that is in the heart that can come about from being in the presence so Christians talk about faith obviously faith having this cognitive component which we described you just described but also our faith being fundamentally trust fundamentally in some sense finding refuge in God in some sense finding in God proper home for oneself I think that that well like I was saying that Imam al-ghazali said that faith can actually come into you in sitting in the presence of a sanctified being and I'll give you an example what is it come into you faith can come into what's the faith that comes into you what can you describe in different words the added the the when the Prophet was asked what is faith he gave the object of faith and I think that he said faith is to believe in God and and I think that it's very difficult I read Kenny's book when I was in them you know what is faith right I mean there's there's a lot of debates about what this term means obviously but I think faith is you know I'll give me an example father Dino Rossi one of the great theologians of Islam from from 13th century was walking and he and he had all these students behind him and an old woman said to him said to one of the students who is that man he said don't that's forbidden all right he has 70 proofs for the existence of God and she said why does he need proofs for the existence of God what kind of faith is that and when father Dean heard that he said you should have the faith of old women but is that that faith is is she talking about and then he also firmly is that at the level of cognition so this guy's got all these proofs but I don't improve but you simply intuitively assent to the existence of God I bought the idea of I seek refuge in God I said I I submit to God you can you can have all the proofs of God's existence and then not actually I think the point that he was she was making and he was making was that there is a difference between doctrine and the reality of faith that you can have all the proofs you want and many many atheists know all the the dominant proofs philosophical proofs for the existence of God I mean they know the cosmological argument you know the argument from design all these things but but there's no faith and so so one of the things in the Islamic tradition is what's called topic which is realization and and and that I was going to give you an example of I know somebody Guy Eaton who wrote a book called the remembrance of God Guy Eaton was was a committed atheist and and he told me this and he said that faith came into his heart after meeting a man named Martin Ling's mhm and and he said it was the first time he'd ever met what he felt was a truly pious human being and and it really had an effect on him another example is CS Lewis who was an atheist but when he met Chesterton hmm he said he was forced to reassess his his entire understanding of religion because he thought it was a simpletons belief and and when he met this incredibly brilliant man who had such profound faith it forced him to reassess his faith and so I think just meeting a deeply faithful person can have an impact on the human soul in some ways also in the Christian tradition of saints are much more compelling quote/unquote arguments because they they are tracked by the very their very existence and once you find the way of life that you encounter compelling you're pulled at the level not of cognition simply but at the level of volition at the level of emotion toward that would that this doctor evolve I think you you you to me you've hit on the crux of the issue I think what our world LAX's is sanctified people and I and I think that that I I think in the past one of the reasons Christianity spread so rapidly was because of these extraordinary human beings that even some of the Stoics who watched the Christians being eaten by lions converted to Christianity because they felt that these these were the first true Stoics that they'd ever seen and and I think the same is true if you study the early spread of Islam and there's no religion that spread as rapidly as Islam in in history I mean you can just see see this in a beautiful something was done on on the on the internet where they showed the timelines of the spreads of the world religions and Islam just it just goes like that it's so quick in terms of the timeline and a lot of it was these people and my own experience in meeting the first Muslims I met that had these qualities that I hadn't seen before and and and and my teachers that I studied with you know the the Hindus have something called darshan which is sitting you know in the presence of somebody who has done that work on himself and and that in sitting in that presence you can enter into a Samadhi state and I can testify to that truth and but those people now are actually I think they're very hidden yeah you know what strikes me sometimes that the various religions of Martin speak about Christian Christian faith it both it is both about how life should be lived but it's also about judgments about what kind of life is worthy of human beings and sometimes criteria for worthiness are more difficult to communicate simply cognitively and so you in a sense need to be faced by either community or by person who embodies this and you can imagine the entire Gestalt of this thing how life might look if criteria of what measures the value of what makes judgments about values would be different and people find it sometimes incredibly desirable and irresistible we model yeah I mean this is our nature children model they here they see and this is why it's so important for us to be dignified one of the things that I've noticed just in my own lifetime and I don't know I think Europe's a little different from America but one things that I've noticed just because I'm approaching my 60th decade and and I think about when I was young how I looked at adults and what I find is adults today are much more childish I just I they dress like children they act like children and children dress like adults to kind of the the leveling between the it's very strange whereas if you look for instance at portraits from you know the the 15th century 16th century children are always address like little adults mmm no that's interesting and and and so this idea of becoming an adult was so important like getting your first breeches this was a transition for for kids because they wore the shorts but then they got pants breeches and and this was a rite of passage the bar mitzvah you know the circumcision at 7 entering into the age of discrimination these these even Aboriginal peoples have these rites of passage where you enter into adulthood and I think we have allowed for a sustained adolescence in some ways Western civilization to me is a very adolescent civilization we don't have the gravitas the debt the the depth and and weightiness one of the things that pour on calls humans is the weighty ones that there were a weighty species and and and the frivolity even in our language we've we've lost gravity in the way we speak one of the things that that that historically I think was very important to people was to speak properly even even I mean the wonderful Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion even though the you know it's obviously the satirical but the desire of the lower classes to speak like the the upper class this desire to - when we look at a rose we what we want to see is the beauty of a the rose the more we admire it that the closer it is to our understanding of what a rose is we have some sense of the perfection of a rose and that's why if if it has that that the closer it is to that ideal in our mind why do we have that ideal and this is what I feel in our culture the the type of inversion that's happened where Beauty beauty is scoffed and ugliness is that the fact that people buy clothes that are rags now they wear rags whereas people in rags always wanted to be able to afford clothes that weren't ragged it's it's interesting I think I mean we can talk about fashion and I'm quite interested in fashion and kind of a spiritual dimension so there's a spiritual dimension I mean our clothes Greek atheism that would be interesting to to explore but let me let me take it just slightly it slightly differently because I think it's it's obviously at least I think it's to the heart of what we think in terms of what what one thinks about about the good life one way to conceive of it is to have this kind of ideal almost like ideal types or exemplars into which one inspires right and then the question becomes which is a typically very modern a question is what happened to with my particularity in this that I was born in this place with these kinds of gifts with these kinds of propensity is with this kind of a kind of a body you want to put me into some kind of a straitjacket and you see the whole this ideal of authenticity and in the Christian tradition you have this to two impulses and you can see it so that somebody like like SCOTUS where you have this general but you have to also the emphasis on the on the particularity of each one of us and Martin Luther for instance says what God calls each of us by our name right and that's so significant can you can you talk to me well about significance of of my own authentic particularity you know Heidegger has this concept of throne nests were thrown in to this world and then we become historical products we we imbibe our culture our ideas the way we articulate all these things and much of it is given to us it's not and therefore we come into this crises so if we're reflective people that I'm not really an authentic person I'm just a historical product I think one of the things for me about pre-modern cultures is that what you would find is outwardly there was a lot of conformity but but inwardly and I've seen this because I've been in pre-modern societies Mauritania and West Africa where I was what I noted was they have an outward conformity decorum which they used to call decorum we don't even use that word anymore but decorum it's a good Jane Austen word you know decorum decorum you know that there's a type of comportment the way we carry ourselves and and and it's a respect for social norms because society thrives on stability when there's great change in society there's always turbulence and Technology thrives on rapid change and so this is part of the crises that we have in the modern world is this loss of a conformity to norms by cultures have norms and they're there for a reason but we are still individuals and within those cultural norms we have our own personalities and those personalities I think one of the things about our culture is that outwardly people are all very different but inwardly they're actually quite vacuous and similar in a lot of ways that's it that's that's very interesting and I think this is kind of inward conformity notwithstanding the emphasis or maybe because of the emphasis of Adventism yeah I read a book on the philosophy of tattoos and one of the chapters in there was I think therefore I am and it was this idea of wanting to be you know I think people feel a lot of anonymity and and and and a desire to assert themselves and to me I think one of the main reasons for that I mean god only knows really but I think personally the problems that we have in our culture is when you don't have caregivers that are devoutly committed to children at an early age I think children lose a sense of self and and and so they spend the rest of their life trying to assert and establish that but when they're given a lot of care a lot of attention a lot of love when they're young they don't need to be attention seekers but also in the we will live in a kind of market driven culture and often market driven culture rather than simply market culture rich market is an important instrument market driven driven culture often tends to have a quick rate of obsolescence because it also drives think the result is I mean I'm thinking of a phrase from from Karl Marx a communist manifesto maybe I shouldn't leave okit but I think that document is diagnostically very interesting everything that is solid melts into air he says at one point and it's kind of a plasticity where one doesn't have a place to stand but you can make it up or you can create stability with certain forms of decorum social social emulation but you can also that there's something that there's something about the relationship to divine also that gives this stability is that also I I think that's the source of weightiness yeah I mean without what else you have Unbearable Lightness Unbearable Lightness of being that's it and and and and and no real connection because you know Kierkegaard's idea that you have to at least establish one true love and you know you have to to really understand hence the the relationship between man and woman was so central to these religious teachings certainly in the Abrahamic faiths I mean I know Christianity has an ideal of for at least the priests and the and the the Cardinals and things and idea of celibacy complete and utter dedication to God but still it acknowledges the sacrament of marriage this idea that that this relationship of of really unconditional love at best when when it's truly a relationship that that is how we're informed of love and understanding them and that's why love is so central to the religious teachings I mean there's a lot of people that criticize Islam it's not I've seen this in many Christian books you know that it's not a love based religion but the reality of it is love was always identified as the highest ideal in in the Islamic tradition there were certain theologians that said you couldn't really love God because God is not of our species and you could only truly love your own species Ghazali says theologians say there's know nothing of true religion and this is why I like azam because all these great and and and this is why good you know that traditionally the the Sufis used the the divine essence in Arabic that is is a feminine word and so they use the feminine as an expression in their poetry and Leila what they called Leila and Salma they use it as expression because that erotic love that intense desire I mean one of the motifs that's really nice I saw last night in the church that we were at one of the motifs in churches and mosques and this very intriguing is the vine yeah and and the vine it you know in traditional cosmology the vine is is is the the only willful plant it has a type of will but it's also got this this you know the word in Arabic for erotic love is the same word for the The Binding of the vine and so the this idea of just falling in love with God and we talked earlier and I'll tie it with what you just said I think it's very important point we talked earlier about a need for stability for structures and often people flee into artificially constructed structures that aren't good for them so kind of rigidity of meaning that's imposed upon them and and then flee out and because because they they see how vapid the pleasures which have no particular meaning except satisfying my own limited desires did presumably I mean I think of it in terms of Christian faith that there's kind of unity there needs to be unity between between a meaning which requires certain stability and certain expansion of the self to something larger than oneself and pleasure and some kind of emotional fulfillment or we might say joy as well did you see that tension in Islam maybe the people who like to press with the thumb down in order to create those structures and forget about the you I think you're right somewhere but the pleasure that the person has in God rather than in the worldly things on the other hand you've got kind of empty pleasures that that they lack the meaning is right well I'd say I think I mean pleasure is an ancient just problem it's one of the great ideas right just the whole not just problem right you don't mean the dead well it's a problem in that it literally becomes an idol for many people the pursuit of pleasure is is literate becomes the goal of life the humanists and there's a there's a lot of I mean I I like the concept that's the empty one right there that's empty and and and I think the the problem with all pleasures is that they're temporary yeah and and and and that's where the hello reference is something outside in a sense you you give yourself to nothing you just take everything in right and I think in a true relationship for instance the relationship between a meaningful relationship with a man and a wife the the deepest pleasure is pleasuring the other I mean there's an incredible and I think that's true I I have to believe that that's true in all deep and deeply intimate relations the the desire to give the other the gift of pleasuring the other so unity of meaning and pleasure is in love I I think it is and I and I think that and and this is why you know there's a beautiful verse in the Quran it's exactly several times it's it's a very common that God is pleased with them and they are pleased with God that this mutuality of of pleasure this idea you know we in our theology there's a chapter tapped as Ani has Ken does God experience joy mmm right duska yes absolutely even one simple God and a non compound experience is joy tell me where we have the same the son before of course in the Quran yeah you might have gotten it from us no actually actually I must have gone I around because remember what Jesus said about joy you know what when one sinner these are these are we believe that these are revelations from the same source and and and therefore they would have the same they're going to have so much shared context and both traditions influenced one another there's undeniable historically but God has given us you know get one of the attributes of God in our tradition is is laughter it's not taken literally but God's love but there is there are there are Hadees of the part where it says your Lord laughs bike out of bucha you know and and uses that some people - coughing way or no no no kind of not joy sing out of rejoicing yeah laughing out loud right way for instance no but for instance your there's a hadith that says the saying of the Prophet salat is and it says that God laughs at a man who is is woken up for his dawn prayer by his wife mmm and and what they say in the counter is that he he's pleased with that that that it it it brings him joy just to see that and presumably that's the kind of element of devout life in kind of imitation of God so that pleasure it's seeing the good and beautiful and true gangrene one else that's one of leisure consistent one of the things you know that the in the in in the lexicon and you know cosmos the word mosè which has different meanings but you know one of them is the world in Greek but another is order and another is decorum right is is is decorum and and then another is is moral goodness cosmos it has to do with moral goodness and so this idea of you know these three great virtues that I think are all our traditions share of truth goodness and beauty and and and for us it's Iman Islam asan Iman is the truth the truth of God that we are knowers by nature in our triune nature where knowers and we're doers we will things and and and but we're also makers we produce things with our knowledge and our will and and and we're we're meant to know the truth were meant to do the good and we're meant to make the beautiful to produce the beautiful and this is why if you look at surgical tools from the Muslim period in Andalusia you can actually Google this as a Holly's surgical tools you'll see that they're all beautifully embellished they're surgical tools but they all had beautiful artwork on them why why was it so important for for pre-modern cultures to adorn everything they adorn their clothes why was lace so important all their buildings were adorned why was why was wainscotting so important why is this beautiful woodwork important now this functionalism of modern society which has lost the making of beauty what we call a son it's lost and it's something in us that's lost I mean one of the things you know we we say that that what is out there is inside you know that that man is a microcosm Imam Ali said that you think that you're an insignificant thing and yet in you as the entire universe that we are the microcosm and one of the things that I see that we're losing on the planet we're not losing cockroaches we're not losing rats they're thriving but we're losing Eagles we're losing lions and tigers and leopards we're losing these qualities in ourself that are majestic and beautiful and what's remaining is is is is is is found us and the filth and and so we are ultimately if people want to clean up the the environment they have to clean up themselves because the environment is a reflection of what's inside of us or the consequences of misplaced desire we could go on for a very long time but maybe this broader framework of god who provides both the structures of meaning but also is a source of pleasure indeed unity of meaning and pleasure in joy in the truth and the beauty and the goodness is a good place to to end thank you very much well thank you doctor I really appreciate you honouring me by just inviting me and thank you you're both welcome thank you

Channel: Hamza Yusuf

Views: 206,372

Rating: 4.8757415 out of 5

Keywords: Islam, Hamza Yusuf, Miroslav Volf

Id: xI_yrkmOLQc

Length: 40min 45sec (2445 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/a5ph]

He's so eloquent and persuasive.