Averroes was a renowned Islamic theologian, philosopher, lawyer, politician and logician. He also had mastery over psychology, medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics and celestial mechanics. Since he was a lawyer as well as a philosopher, his aim in writing theology must have been to display his orthodoxy. He was of the opinion that the task of philosophy is to consider facts in so far as they point to a creator. This is only reducing the practice of the Holy Quran to a system. For Averroes, religion and philosophy are in no way opposed. Both are in fact two different ways of attaining the same truth.
Averroes said that Revelation is the source of much human knowledge for "if the sciences of mechanics and astronomy did not exist, no one could learn all that is now known of them except by revelation". For him, reason does not contradict Revelation. The general crowd cannot imagine anything that is not body and thinks that what it cannot imagine does not exist. So the Quran speaks to them in words they can understand and hails God as light, the most widely known object in the world. The Quran also says that God will see man in the hereafter. The Prophet Muhammad said, "We are told to speak to men according to the measure of their intelligence". So the Quran, if rightly understood, is nearer to reason than the allegorical interpretations of it. If reason contradicts the Quran, then it must be interpreted, but if interpretation of one part is needed, the truth is stated plainly elsewhere. However, if two verses contradict each other, reason must decide between them.
Philosophy agrees with Islam. From one point of view the universe is created, from another it is eternal. The Quran emphasizes the creation but admits that being and time are eternal. The terms universal and particular do not apply to God`s knowledge for man`s knowledge is derived from things whereas His knowledge causes them. Averroes speaks of two kinds of Knowledge of Truth. The first being his knowledge of truth of religion being based in faith and thus could not be tested, nor did it require training to understand. The second knowledge of truth is philosophy, which was reserved for an elite few who had the intellectual capacity to undertake this study. The statements made by revelation about the future life either literal or metaphorical are, according to Averroes, addressed to the crowd in terms it can understand. Any interpretation can only be directed to scholars and must not be divulged to the crowd. Averroes insists that the crowd cannot appreciate proof; he divides men into three groups, - the crowd, those who can appreciate a debating argument, and the elect who understand real proof. The arguments used with the third class must not be addressed to the second and still less to the crowd.
Averroes says that the arguments for the being of God are Providence and creation. Providence is displayed in the fact that the world is planned with a view to man and this plan is essential. Everything in the world is invented and an invention needs an inventor. Nature is a manufactured article.
On man`s activity he says, God has created for us powers by which we can acquire opposites. The acquisition of one of these opposites is possible only by the help of causes outside ourselves which He has put at our service. Our acts are performed by our will and the similarity of external forces. These external causes do not only complete the acts which we will to do but are the cause that we will one of two alternatives. For will is desire which arises in us from imagination or belief; this belief is not optional but comes to us from without. Goodness and righteousness cannot exist without the possibility of evil, so Averroes dares to say that God creates evil for the sake of good. God cannot do the impossible.
The intellect is distinguished from the soul. The intellect is abstract and exists only when it is united with the universal active intellect; in man it is only a possibility of receiving ideas from the active intellect. The soul is the motive power which causes life and growth. It is form to the matter of the body. It remains as an individual after the death of the body.
Averroes attacks theologians for their methods. Many of the premises on which they built their system are Sophisms which contradict experience. They establish belief in God on reason, He is the end of a chain of argument; He is the creator of the phenomenal world because it is made up of compounds and because they are composed of atoms. This argument cannot be understood by intelligent men, is not conclusive and does not prove God. In another place he says that the arguments of theology do not rest on the wisdom of God but on contingency. If a thing is possible, reason says that it may exist in one form or the opposite of that form. That it has one of the two is due to action from outside, from God. Obviously this argument does not rest on the wisdom of God or His providence. Theology wished to avoid recognizing causes other than God but he, who denies the sequence of cause and effect, denies the wise creator.
