From the Shahid to the Ghayb: The Vision of God in Late Antiquity, the Qur'an, and Islamic Theology

This dissertation examines the origin, content, and controversy of the doctrine of the vision of God in the Qur’an and the Muslim theologians who interpreted it. The dissertation’s core thesis is that the Qur’an is deeply engaged in late antique theological discourses about the vision of God and articulates its own distinct approach to the topic. The theological controversy among theologians in the 9-10th centuries AD over whether one could see God with bodily eyes arises from an attempt to account for the Qur’an’s affirmations of God’s invisible, non-anthropomorphic transcendence and of the believer’s beatific vision of God in the eschatological future.