89); or al-Razis phrase, "the purpose of the Qur'an is either to do something or to leave something" (Tafsir, al-Ikhlas, verse 1); or the four headings the latter lists as "constituting the entire purpose of the Qur'an:
theologics (ilahiyyat), eschatology (ma'ad), prophetics (nubuwwat) and the affirmation of the preordained decree (al-qada' wal-qadar)" (Tafsir of the Fatiha, "the name Umm al-Qur'an'); or Shah Waliyyullah's "five categories of knowledge beyond which the Qur'an never goes" in al-Fawz al-Kabir: the science of legal rulings, that of polemic and dialectics, that of didactical instruction and admonishment, that of divine historiography, and that of the last things and eschatology; or the eight headings proposed by Fazlur Rahman in his Major Themes of the Qur'an.
In that process, the ultimate is still allowed its absolute status through which it impresses its peculiar brand of truth on the believer (for if not, its truth could never be understood), but simultaneously, the ultimate is also made relative by still other
theologics: To believe absolutely, and to reflect non-dogmatically.