An Investigation of the Concept of God in the Existential Theology (Macquarrie) and Its Criticism from the Perspective of Islamic Theosophy

This article will explain, investigate and criticize the concept of God from the perspective of the contemporary British Priest and theologian, John Macquarrie (born at 1919). Macquarrie bases his perspectives in philosophical theology on the existential thought of Martin Heidegger, the well-known German thinker. He tries to design religious theology using Heidegger's thought which is intrinsically non-religious and is not even theological – in the conventional meaning of theology. Therefore he compares 'existence' in Heidegger's thought with 'God' and produces his existential theology. Although his effort is theologically valuable, but has two criticisms from the perspective of Islamic theology: first of all, Macquarrie's theory which considers existence and God the same, encounters some problems; second of all, while he tries to explain the relation between existence and God, he confuses the concept and referent of existence. But according to the Islamic theology, 'existence' and God are not equivalent, and also the concept and referent of existence are exactly specified; and consequently the relation between God and existence are more exactly, easily and clearly explained. These points provide important bases for the criticism of Macquarrie's view. I have paid a special attention to Ibn-Sina and Molla-Sadra's views about existence in this article.