Introduction: Posing the Problem and the Central Doubt

The historical intellectual knot turns around an age-old dilemma: if God, glorified is He, has ordained the destinies and written the decree, encompassing all things from eternity, then how can the human being be free and responsible for his acts?

This problem produces two opposing doubts that threaten the very essence of religion:

• The first (the doubt of compulsion): it claims that belief in prior decree and destiny necessarily entails that the human being is compelled in his acts and driven like a mute machine, which makes the system of reward and punishment, Paradise and Hell, a kind of absurdity and injustice — far be that from divine justice.

• The second (the doubt of delegation): it claims that, in order to declare God transcendent above injustice, one must say that God created the human being and delegated his acts to him absolutely and cut off His support from him — which blemishes the unity of divine acts and places in the cosmos acts that fall outside His authority and dominion.

This apparent contradiction cast the “Sunni” Islamic schools into a great doctrinal impasse, and this confusion was not lifted except by the methodical reading of the school of the the Prophet's household (AS) and the later philosophical demonstration of Transcendent Philosophy.

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1. The Methodical Clarification of Concepts and Terms

Before examining the responses of the schools and their incoherence, the four terms around which the inquiry revolves must be precisely defined, to prevent any conceptual confusion:

• Qadar (destiny): the cosmic engineering; it means placing the measures, limits, and dimensions of every existent in the world of matter, such as the biological, hereditary, and physical ways.

• Qada (decree): the stage of necessitation and inevitability, that is, a thing’s coming into the sphere of actual realization after the completion of its causes and factors in accordance with the established measures.

• Compulsion (jabr): the perspective that sees the servant as entirely stripped of will and choice in the acts issuing from him, and that he is a mere machine moved by an external coercion, so that he has no real act but is like a feather in the blowing of the wind.

• Delegation (tafwid): the perspective opposite to compulsion, which claims that God, glorified is He, after creating the servants and granting them power, delegated to them the management of their acts with an absolute, independent delegation, such that the connection of the divine will and power to their daily acts is cut off.

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2. The Islamic Schools and Falling into the Doctrinal Forbidden

When the other Islamic schools faced this problem, they were unable to combine “the unity of divine acts” with “divine justice,” and so they split into two currents representing excess and deficiency:

1. The Ash’arites and Falling into Hidden Compulsion

Fleeing from the idea of the existence of an agent other than God in the cosmos, the Ash’arites went to affirm the divine destiny in a way that abolished human efficacy. And when they wished to rid themselves of the hideousness of absolute compulsion, they invented the theory of “acquisition” (kasb), which in its philosophical depth reduces to compulsion itself. They hold that God is truly the creator of the servants’ acts — good and evil, obedience and disobedience — and that the servant’s role is a mere concurrence and conjunction of his originated power with the act, without any real influence of his upon it.

The doctrinal forbidden: this view attributes ugliness and injustice to the divine arena; for how can God compel the servant to disobedience and then punish him for it? This demolishes the concept of moral obligation and justice, and even justifies tyranny and social injustice throughout history by making it an inescapable, coerced destiny.

2. The Mu’tazilites and Falling into the Forbidden of Delegation and the Polytheism of Governance

By contrast, the Mu’tazilites fled from compulsion to protect the principle of “divine justice” and to declare God transcendent above creating evils, but they fell into the opposite extreme, which is delegation; for they claimed that the servant creates his acts independently and in complete separation from God.

The doctrinal forbidden: this perspective denies the complete unity of divine acts, because it supposes the existence of independent creators and agents in the cosmos who fall outside the will, the dominion, and the existential support of the Creator — which is a clear deficiency in God’s absolute authority over His dominion.

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3. The School of the Ahl al-Bayt (AS) and the Manifestation of “A Matter Between Two Matters” as a Doctrinal Principle

The methodical reading reveals that the school of the the Prophet's household (AS) was never a mere reaction or a passing current that arose to resolve the later dispute between compulsion and delegation; rather it is the root origin and the pure natural extension of authentic Islam as it was revealed to the noble Messenger (PBUH). At the time when the other theological schools deviated to the right and to the left and fell into that doctrinal incoherence, the pure monotheistic controls were firm and fixed in the awareness of this school, as a true exposition with neither excess nor deficiency.

The Imams from the family of Muhammad (AS) transmitted this decisive divine balance in abundance; Imam Ja’far ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq (83–148 AH / 702–765 CE) (AS) proclaimed his firm monotheistic cry:

“Neither compulsion nor delegation, but a matter between two matters.”

And when the narrators asked him about the reality of this matter and how the two acts combine, Imam Ali ibn Musa al-Rida (148–203 AH / 765–818 CE) (AS) laid down the firm rational rule with his saying:

“Indeed, God, mighty and majestic, is not obeyed by coercion, nor disobeyed by being overpowered, nor did He neglect the servants in His dominion.”

The scholars of Shia thought received this rule and framed it in precise theological proofs:

• Al-Shaykh al-Mufid (336–413 AH / 948–1022 CE) set out from the centrality of divine justice to refute Ash’arite compulsion, clarifying that acts issue from the servants truly and by a power God originated within them, citing His saying, exalted is He:

“And say: Work, for Allah will see your work, and His Messenger.” (Al-Tawba: 105)

• Khwaja Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (597–672 AH / 1201–1274 CE) came and framed the question with the proof of “causality and responsibility” in his Tajrid al-I’tiqad, affirming that the servant’s will is the direct cause of the act of the limbs, and citing the conscientious difference present in the awareness of every human being between the voluntary motion of his hand in writing and its coerced trembling motion caused by illness — which is the strongest conscientious proof denying compulsion and coercion.

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4. The Philosophical Foundation of “A Matter Between Two Matters” in “Transcendent Philosophy”

If the theologians proved “a matter between two matters” by demonstration and theology, then the deeper and more precise philosophical formulation that explained the “how” of the combination of God’s act with the servant’s act vertically is attributed to the school of “Transcendent Philosophy” of the philosopher Sadr al-Muta’allihin al-Shirazi (Mulla Sadra, 979–1050 AH / 1571–1640 CE) through the theory of “vertical causation.”

The Theory of Vertical Causation (the Bringing-into-Being Agent and the Preparatory Agent)

Mulla Sadra holds that a single act is truly attributed to the servant and truly attributed to God as well, without the least contradiction, because the agency here is not “horizontal,” like two persons sharing in pushing one cart — which is the illusion of isolated delegation — but a vertical agency in which the roles occupy two ranks:

• The preparatory causes (the role of the servant and matter): these are the elements of the inanimate world of matter, such as fire, oxygen, and paper in the process of combustion. Mulla Sadra holds that these materials do not possess in themselves life or an independent power to create the effect or the existence; rather they are merely prepared material conditions whose only function is to ready matter and make it capable and disposed to receive the effect. The servant possesses his will and his motion as a preparatory cause by which he undertakes the intention and the act by his choice.

• The higher abstract cause (the role of the divine will): it is that which actually pours the effect of combustion, existence, and power in the external world upon matter and upon the servant’s will at every second. God, glorified is He, is the agent at a higher rank as “the bringing-into-being cause” that supplies the servant with life and power, and the servant is an agent by his undertaking of choice at his lower rank.

Applying the Theory to Understanding Phenomena and Miracles (the Fire of Abraham AS)

According to this philosophical foundation in Transcendent Philosophy, our senses register only the material side — that is, the preparatory causes — but they are unable to register the abstract, unseen power that supplies matter with its properties at every instant. On the basis of this principle, Mulla Sadra unravels the riddle of miracles such as the non-burning of the Prophet Abraham (AS); when the divine command descended:

“We said: O fire, be coolness and safety upon Abraham.” (Al-Anbiya: 69)

The laws of physics were not broken, for the fire, the wood, and the oxygen were fully present — that is, the preparatory causes were complete — but what happened is that the higher abstract cause, by God’s command, halted the outpouring of the effect of burning and poured in its place a new effect: coolness and safety.

This proves that matter is a poor, derived, dependent agent, and in the same way the human being moves: he possesses freedom of preparatory choice, but he is encompassed and derived, in his existence and in the inevitability of his act, from the higher abstract cause.

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5. Dismantling the Interpretive Doubts About the Verses of “Absolute Agency”

After Mulla Sadra built this philosophical foundation of vertical causes, the illusion and the latent compulsion in the outward sense of certain Quranic verses necessarily dissolved — verses that point to God being the doer of everything, the Provider, the Giver of life and death, the Expander and the Withholder:

• The verses of provision, withholding, and expansion: such as His saying, exalted is He:

“Allah expands provision for whom He wills and restricts it.” (Al-Ra’d: 26)

It becomes clear, according to Transcendent Philosophy, that provision is governed by the vertical causes; the servant enacts the preparatory causes such as striving, thinking, and working, while God pours the effect of blessing and provision — that is, the bringing-into-being act. God is truly the Provider and the Expander because He is the originator of the earth, the seeds of the plant, the sender of the rain, and the bestower of the energy of motion in the body of the servant, and He is the One who made the result follow effort in His conditioned equations.

• The verses of barrenness and childbearing: such as His saying, exalted is He:

“And He makes whom He wills barren.” (Al-Shura: 50)

The will here means the running of the biological and hereditary ways that God engineered into matter; when the natural causes of childbearing meet — the preparatory causes — the abstract cause pours forth life and His will runs, and when those medical causes are disordered His will also runs with barrenness according to the same cosmic laws.

• The verses of sending down rain: such as His saying, exalted is He:

“Is it you who sent it down from the clouds, or are We the senders?” (Al-Waqi’a: 69)

The verse attributes the act to God because He is the cause of causes and the bestower of existence, while the Quran details its material preparatory causes elsewhere:

“It is Allah who sends the winds, and they stir the clouds, and He spreads them in the sky however He wills.” (Al-Rum: 48)

So the winds and condensation are preparatory causes, and the bringing-into-being of the rain is an effect that terminates in the higher abstract cause.

• The verses of guidance and misguidance: such as His saying, exalted is He:

“So Allah misguides whom He wills and guides whom He wills.” (Ibrahim: 4)

Divine guidance and misguidance are a penal and existential effect that inevitably follows the servant’s initial choice; God misguides no one from the outset without a cause. Rather He says, exalted is He, decisively resolving the doubt:

“And He misguides not by it except the defiantly disobedient.” (Al-Baqara: 26)

And He says:

“So when they deviated, Allah caused their hearts to deviate.” (Al-Saff: 5)

The servant begins with deviation by his choice — a preparatory cause — and then the penal existential result restrains him by the withdrawal of success from the higher cause.

This philosophical reconciliation melts entirely into the standard of the vertical relation summarized by the noble verse:

“And you did not throw when you threw, but it was Allah who threw.” (Al-Anfal: 17)

It affirmed the throwing to the Prophet (PBUH) first, clarifying his undertaking of the preparatory cause and the intention, and denied of him the independent throwing second, because the bringing-into-being support, the moving of the wind, and the conveying of the effect is a continuous outpouring from the higher abstract cause.

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6. The Dynamism of Destiny and the Concept of “Bada” in the School of the Ahl al-Bayt (AS) and the Philosophical Analysis

If it has become clear that the human being’s voluntary act represents a preparatory cause above which the abstract cause pours the effect, then this inevitably draws us to understand how God writes the destinies in His tablet: are the destinies rigid and frozen, unaffected by human freedom?

1. The Scriptural Rooting from the Noble Verses

The school of the the Prophet's household (AS) demonstrated the flexibility and dynamism of destiny, setting out from the firm Quranic texts that root the concept of “conditional divine disclosure” as a doctrinal principle linking human choice to God’s will; the noble Quran affirms in more than one place the existence of suspended destinies that change and move with the change of the servants’ acts and their striving:

• His saying, exalted is He:

“Allah erases what He wills and confirms, and with Him is the Mother of the Book.” (Al-Ra’d: 39)

• His saying, glorified is He, in distinguishing the conditional term from the inevitable term:

“It is He who created you from clay, then decreed a term, and a specified term is with Him.” (Al-An’am: 2)

• His saying regarding the effect of seeking forgiveness and turning to God on repelling the ordained punishment and changing the result:

“But Allah would not punish them while they seek forgiveness.” (Al-Anfal: 33)

2. The Doctrinal Controls in the Reports of the Ahl al-Bayt (AS)

The reports of the family of Muhammad (AS) came to make clear that conditional divine disclosure is not an ignorance that comes over God — far be that from Him — nor a change in His eternal knowledge, but a manifestation of His absolute power, a disclosure of something hidden from creation, and an opening of the door of hope and change through striving and worship. Their noble texts varied in rooting this meaning:

• Imam Ja’far ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq (83–148 AH / 702–765 CE) (AS) said:

“God has not been worshiped by anything like bada.”

And in another wording:

“God has not been magnified by anything like bada.”

Because belief in bada is a true acknowledgment that God does whatever He wills and is not shackled by the laws of rigid matter.

• In denying the occurrence of ignorance, Imam al-Sadiq (AS) says with a decisive phrase:

“Whoever claims that God, mighty and majestic, has something newly appear to Him that He did not know yesterday, disassociate yourselves from him.”

And from him (AS):

“Indeed, no bada came to God out of ignorance.”

• Imam Ali ibn Musa al-Rida (148–203 AH / 765–818 CE) (AS) laid down the golden rule that joins eternal knowledge with the change of conditioned measures, saying:

“Indeed, God, mighty and majestic, brings forward and delays, and erases what He wills and confirms, and with Him is the Mother of the Book; so everything that appears to God was in His knowledge before it appeared.”

3. The Two Demonstrative Ranks of Writing the Destinies in the Philosophers

Founding upon these authentic verses and reports, the Shia philosophers framed this concept demonstratively by dividing the divine tablet and the writing of the destinies into two complementary ranks:

• The Preserved Tablet (the Mother of the Book): it is God’s eternal, comprehensive, and final knowledge, encompassing all that was and all that will be, outside the limits of time. This tablet is fixed, does not change, and no erasure reaches it at all, because the final result was written in it from the first with all its qualifications and voluntary conditions that the servant will enact by his full will.
• The Tablet of Erasure and Confirmation: it is the arena of the flexible, conditioned cosmic equations and ways, open to the servants’ acts and their free choices; it is the existential register that admits change in correlation with the servant’s preparatory conduct.

4. The Approximating Illustrative Example

To simplify the mechanism of the Tablet of Erasure and Confirmation and the dynamism of destiny, far from philosophical complexity, we offer this approximating illustrative example:

Imagine a conscious, nurturing mother who has accompanied her child in every moment of his life and knows the details of his personality and his points of weakness and strength with complete knowledge. This mother decides to place her child in a real test to develop his personality, so she sets before him two choices — a certain sweet or a certain toy — and leaves him absolute and complete freedom in choosing, without any pressure or coercion.

• In the Tablet of Erasure and Confirmation (the arena of conditioned choices): the choices are truly open before the child, and he has the full conscientious ability to extend his hand right or left.
• In the Preserved Tablet (the mother’s encompassing knowledge): the mother, out of the intensity of her knowledge and encompassment of her child, sits knowing with certainty, from the beginning, that he will choose the toy and will not turn to the sweet.

When the child extends his hand and actually chooses the toy, is it reasonable to say that “the mother’s prior knowledge” is what compelled and forced the child to this choice? Of course not; the child chose with his full will and freedom, and the mother’s knowledge here was a precise disclosure and not a coercing compeller.

5. A Methodical Note: Examples Are Offered, Not Measured Against

It must be noted here that this example is only to bring the idea closer, and examples are offered but not measured against; for the limited knowledge of human beings cannot be measured against the absolute knowledge of God, not only in quantity and breadth, but in quality and essence as well. The mother’s knowledge remains an impressionistic human knowledge liable to error, even if by a slight degree, whereas the knowledge of God, glorified is He, is presential, eternal knowledge, encompassing the innermost realities of things and all the voluntary qualifications of the servants before their creation — without stripping the servant of freedom. God has written the thing in the Mother of the Book based on what the servant will do by his choice; the servant does not do the thing because God wrote it coercively upon him.

Summary

“conditional divine disclosure,” according to this scriptural and demonstrative rooting, means God’s disclosure of a conditioned matter in the Tablet of Erasure and Confirmation, following the change of the servant’s voluntary conduct, without anything eluding God’s eternal knowledge fixed in the Mother of the Book. God knows the known thing with its voluntary qualification, so He does not compel the servant but leaves him to activate the conditioned ways by his full will and striving.

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7. The Philosophical Interpretation of Supplication and Seeking Nearness as Cosmic Causes Directed at Nature

Founding upon the dynamism of destiny in the Tablet of Erasure and Confirmation, supplication, seeking nearness, and the prayer for rain rise, in Shia philosophy, from mere isolated devotional rituals to become effective cosmic tools that enter the very core of the system of causality, through two principles that came from the school of Transcendent Philosophy of Mulla Sadra:

1. Supplication and Seeking Nearness as Conditioned Unseen Causes

According to the foundations of Sadrian philosophy, God placed in the system of causality material ways and unseen ways; just as taking medicine is a material cause — a preparatory cause — that God placed for healing, so supplication and imploring is a real, unseen spiritual cause that possesses the ability to change the conditioned equations in the Tablet of Erasure and Confirmation.

The same applies to seeking nearness to God through an honored means through the prophets and the Imams (AS), which rests philosophically on the rule of “mediation in the outpouring”; for although God is absolutely self-sufficient, His cosmic way decreed that bounty and mercy be poured in the world of matter only through heavenly intermediaries — like the sun for light, and the angels for governing the affair by His permission. And since the Prophet and his household (AS) are the most perfect of creatures in soul and the nearest of them in closeness, turning to God through their standing and their stations rests upon the noble verse:

“And seek the means to Him.” (Al-Ma’ida: 35)

This is the activation of the honored spiritual causality; the effect and the existence are from God alone, independently, and His means vertically are His nearest saints — exactly as the shirt of Joseph was made a cause for the return of the sight of his father Jacob, truly and by God’s permission.

2. The Motion of the Soul and Its Effect on Matter (the Prayer for Rain as a Model)

Mulla Sadra advances, in his Transcendent Philosophy, an important demonstrative principle known as “the motion of the soul and its effect on matter” or “the creational authority (spiritual authority over creation) of the soul” in his al-Asfar al-Arba’a; he proves that the human soul is in its essence an abstract, heavenly existent, and that the dominion of the higher over the lower grants it an inherent ability to affect matter, just as your spiritual intention affects the moving of your own body. He affirms that the more the soul is strengthened by worship and seeking forgiveness, the more the circle of its existential influence widens, until it becomes able to affect the matter of the external world by God’s permission.

And if we apply this theory and this philosophical principle of Mulla Sadra, the demonstrative interpretation of the phenomenon of the prayer for rain becomes clear; for when human souls gather with broken, humble intentions directed toward the Origin of existence, this heavenly psychic union — issuing from the principles of Transcendent Philosophy — produces a real ripple and effect in the “prime matter” of the cosmos, and the forces entrusted with nature move to direct the preparatory causes such as the winds and clouds toward rainfall.

Founding upon this principle, Allamah Tabataba’i (1321–1402 AH / 1904–1981 CE) demonstrates in his Bidayat al-Hikma that the unseen causes — such as seeking forgiveness and supplication — do not operate outside the system of causality, but are real, higher causes that dominate the direct material causes and direct them, so conditional divine disclosure occurs and the condition changes in the Tablet of Erasure and Confirmation, in fulfillment of His saying, exalted is He:

“So I said: Seek forgiveness of your Lord; indeed, He is ever a Perpetual Forgiver. He will send down rain upon you in abundance.” (Nuh: 10–11)

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8. The Sciences of the Family of Muhammad (AS) as a Witness to Authentic Islam and Pure Divine Unity

After solving all the doubts philosophically and theologically, it becomes clear to the contemplator, with decisive clarity, that the thesis of the the Prophet's household (AS) is not a mere intellectual option among options, but the great divine blessing, the fixed origin, and the true exposition of authentic Islam as it was revealed to the Messenger of God (PBUH).

While the other schools fell apart and drowned in the contradictions of Ash’arite compulsion, which attributes injustice to God, or Mu’tazilite delegation, which limits His creative authority, the sciences of the family of Muhammad (AS) remained the vigilant fortress that preserves both the dignity of divine unity and the justice of the Creator. They are the speaking Quran and the legitimate extension of the sciences of prophethood; through them the rational and Quranic controls were preserved that grant the believer doctrinal security, for they presented the pure divine balance that joins the affirmation of the complete and responsible human will with the persistence of the absolute divine dominion and will through the wise system of vertical causation.

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Summary and Conclusion

From this research sequence it follows that the system of decree and destiny in Shia thought integrates the unity of divine acts with divine justice in a single demonstrative structure that lifts the perplexity and removes the doubts.

The human being is not a will-less feather in the blowing of the wind — a refutation of compulsion — and he is not a small independent god who creates his acts far from his Lord — a refutation of delegation. Rather he is a true agent who moves with complete responsibility amid material preparatory causes that God framed, and who derives at every second his support, his power, and his will from a higher abstract cause that pours existence and effect, under the eye, the care, and the will of a just and merciful Lord:

“Indeed, Allah does not wrong the people at all, but it is the people who wrong themselves.” (Yunus: 44)