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THE BRANCHES OF THE DOCTRINE

NOT being a philosophy, that is, a merely human
mode of thought, Sufi doctrine is not presented as
the homogeneous development of a mental point of
view. Of necessity it includes many points of view
which may on occasions be mutually contradictory, if
their logical form is alone taken into account without
regard to the universal truth to which they all relate.
Because of this it may be that one master rejects some
doctrinal assertion of another master whose authority
he none the less recognises. Thus, for example, ‘Abd
al-Karim al-Jili, in his book al-Insan al-Kamil (Uni-
versal Man) which is founded on the teaching of Ibn
‘Arabi, rejects the latter’s statement that Divine Know-
ledge depends, like every science, on its object. He does
so because this statement could lead to a belief that
Divine Knowledge is dependent on what is relative.
Now Ibn ‘Arabi refers Divine Knowledge to the pure
possibilities principially contained in the Divine Essence,
so that the apparent duality between Knowledge and its
object does not exist except in the terminology and the
dependence of which he speaks is no more than a logical
picture of the principial identity of the possible and the
real.!
1. In the same way, according to Origen, the Divine foreknowledge
relates to pure possibilities : it includes possibilities but does not determine

them, and that is why Divine foreknowledge and human free-will are not
mutually exclusive. Cf. The Philokalia of Origen on the subject of destiny.

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