His liberal views, especially his interpretations of the Biblical account of the Creation in accordance with the Aristotelian theory of the eternity of the world, stamped him in the eyes of many as a heretic.
This is illustrated by the fact that though he was an unreserved follower of Aristotle, he showed a leaning toward the Kabbalah, the excesses of which, however, he energetically opposed, especially the redaction of Biblical interpretations based on the assumed numerical values of the letters (Gematria).
Albalag remarked that Al-Ghazali did not refute the philosophers but rather his own errors, into which he had fallen by obtaining information not from Aristotle himself, but from his commentators, such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and others.
In the composition of his work Albalag made it his main object to counteract the widespread popular prejudice that philosophy was undermining the foundation of religion.
It is, no doubt, quite true that philosophy, which addresses itself to the individual, differs in its mode of establishing those truths from religion, which appeals to the great masses.
This view resembles the theory of double truth (the theological and the philosophical), originated and chiefly developed in the 13th century at the University of Paris (Lange, Gesch.