Philosophy and scriptural interpretation › Consensus and the charge of unbelief

Averroes next considers a possible obstacle. What if a proposed interpretation contradicts an established consensus about what a religious text means? In section 15, he distinguishes consensus known with certainty from consensus established only conjecturally. The distinction matters because not every reported agreement possesses the same authority.

Establishing consensus about a theoretical question would require knowing the relevant scholars and their positions. It would also require accounting for the possibility that some held interpretations they did not disclose publicly. If learned people regard certain interpretations as appropriate only for prepared readers, silence cannot automatically be counted as agreement with the apparent reading.

This argument does not mean that Averroes rejects consensus everywhere. He distinguishes theoretical questions from practical matters and argues that the evidence needed to establish agreement differs. His conclusion challenges the certainty of a particular kind of consensus claim, rather than erasing religious authority by definition.

The controversy with al-Ghazali enters here. Averroes questions the condemnation of philosophers over the world's eternity, divine knowledge, and the afterlife. He also contests whether al-Ghazali has represented their account of divine knowledge accurately. These are disagreements within the argument, not conclusions a reader should settle simply by choosing a favored author.

On divine knowledge, Averroes insists that God's knowing cannot be assimilated to ours. In the account he defends, human knowledge is an effect of existing things, whereas divine knowledge is their cause. The vocabulary of universal and particular knowledge must therefore be handled carefully. He does not want the alleged restriction on God's knowledge to be treated as a straightforward description of philosophical teaching.

His discussion of the world's origin likewise examines whether familiar labels conceal more complicated agreements and disagreements. A reader should resist reducing the treatise to a slogan that religion says “created” while philosophy says “eternal.” The meaning of dependence, temporal beginning, and the world's relationship to God needs to be specified before the opposition can be judged.