Free will and the decree
If God is omnipotent and knows all, are human acts truly free, or decreed? And if decreed, how is God just to punish them?
Every tradition that holds God both all-powerful and all-knowing, and also just, runs onto the same reef. If God creates and foreknows everything, He creates and foreknows human acts; but then how is the human free, and how is God just to reward and punish deeds He Himself decreed? One side answers for freedom: human acts are genuinely self-originated, because only so is God just and the moral life real, even at some cost to His sovereignty. The other answers for the decree: God's power and grace are total, human freedom is at most a derived 'acquisition' within the decree, and salvation is gift, not achievement, even at some cost to a freedom we feel we have. The fork is almost uncannily the same across the three traditions, and each split along it in the same place.
Human acts are genuinely free and self-originated; this is required if God is to be just in reward and punishment, and if command and repentance are to mean anything. The Muʿtazila, Pelagius, and Maimonides stand here.
God creates and decrees all that is, including human acts; freedom, if real, is a derived 'acquisition' within the decree, and grace, not the unaided will, saves. To exempt human acts from God's power would limit His sovereignty. The Ashʿari kasb, Augustine, and Crescas stand toward here.
Where this fork appears
The same conceptual fork, instantiated in disputes that look unrelated on the surface. Each carries its own break-point: the place where the rhyme stops. No reading is adjudicated, here or on the pages linked.
Do humans originate their own acts, so that divine justice in reward and punishment is secured (Muʿtazila), or does God create every act while the human 'acquires' it (Ashʿari kasb), so that omnipotence is preserved and responsibility salvaged at the seam of acquisition? The Islamic form of the fork between human freedom and the divine decree.
break-point The Islamic instance. The Muʿtazila place human-originated acts on the freedom pole to save divine justice; the Ashʿari kasb places God's creation of the act on the decree pole and recovers responsibility by 'acquisition.' Break-point: the kalam frames it as omnipotence-versus-justice, where the Christian frames it as grace-versus-nature, a difference in the contested middle term.
Can the unaided human will choose the good, so that moral responsibility and God's just commands are secured (Pelagius), or is the fallen will bound until a prevenient grace frees it and works the willing itself, so that salvation is wholly God's gift and the elect are predestined (Augustine)? The Christian form of the fork between human freedom and the divine decree.
break-point The Christian instance, and a near-exact mirror of the Islamic one: Pelagius on the freedom pole (the unaided will can choose the good), Augustine on the decree pole (the bound will is freed only by a prevenient grace, the elect predestined). Break-point: here the contested term is grace and original sin, absent from the Islamic framing, so the fork runs through a different doctrine to the same place.
Is the will genuinely free and self-originating, as the pillar of the Torah requires (Maimonides), or causally determined, with the Torah's justice secured not by an uncaused choice but by the natural and formative working of reward and punishment (Crescas)? The Jewish form of the fork between human freedom and the divine decree, fought between two of its greatest philosophers.
break-point The Jewish instance: Maimonides on the freedom pole (free will the pillar of the Torah, foreknowledge resolved by God's incomprehensible knowledge), Crescas toward the decree pole (the will causally determined, justice grounded in the nature of acts). Break-point: Crescas's determinism is philosophical, not theological predestination, so the Jewish dispute is fought over causation more than over grace or the decree.
On what authority this axis is drawn
Attested in the comparative literature. The fault-line between human freedom (for the sake of divine justice) and the divine decree (for the sake of omnipotence) is a recognized commonplace of comparative philosophy of religion. Wolfson treats the kalam free-will debate in relation to its Christian and Greek background, and Watt traces the early Islamic qadar dispute with its Christian-theological connections, so the Islamic-Christian co-location is attested; the alignment of the Jewish dispute (Maimonides and Crescas) on the same axis is the standard comparative observation.
- Wolfson, Harry Austryn, 1976. The Philosophy of the Kalam, the chapters on the divine attributes (ṣifāt): the Muʿtazilite identification with the essence, the Ashʿarite real attributes, and the Attributists.
- Watt, W. Montgomery, 1948. Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam, Luzac, London; the qadar debate, the Qadariyya/Muʿtazila and the rise of the kasb doctrine. link
This axis is itself a claim, held to the same standard as the positions it gathers. If you hold one of these disputes and think it does not belong on this fork, that objection is welcome and will be recorded: contest it here.