The Qur'an's Epistemology: A Scriptural Approach to Human Knowledge

This dissertation provides a systematic overview of the Qur’an’s theological epistemology. While earlier scholarship has addressed various aspects of the Qur’anic approach to human rationality, there has, as yet, been no satisfactory attempt to offer a targeted analysis of the Qur’anic depiction of human knowing and coming-to-know. The present project therefore fills this lacuna by offering a close, synchronic reading of the text’s epistemological discourse.

On inspection, the Qur’an provides a detailed template for the proper operations of human noetic processes—including cognitive acts such as samiʿa (“hearing”), baṣura (“seeing”), tadhakkara (“remembering”), ʿaqala (“comprehending”), and so on. Ideally, these processes are focused on recognizing and interpreting God’s manifold “signs” (āyāt) for humankind, scattered throughout the created order. Ultimately, these interpretive processes involve viewing various manifest phenomena as reflections of God’s attributes and/or the Qur’an’s proposed vision of human salvation history.

At the same time, the text suggests that humans will not be able to interpret the signs properly unless they are taught to do so. Thus, God sends prophets to humankind, equipped with divinely taught knowledge (ʿilm). Armed with this knowledge, the prophets teach their communities how to read God’s āyāt in the world by offering the proper hermeneutical lens through which to unlock their meaning. In this sense, the Qur’an’s epistemological framework hinges on trust in the prophets, which is encapsulated in the Qur’anic concept of īmān (“belief”). While much of previous scholarship has argued that the Qur’an views īmān as following from a proper apprehension of God’s signs, the present project argues that īmān is a necessary precondition thereto. After all, if humans do not first place their trust in the prophets, then they will not have the proper lens through which to read and understand God’s signs.