Compulsion and Choice: Voluntary Acts, Creation and Acquisition

1. Voluntary actions and moral accountability

وللعباد أفعال اختيارية، يثابون بها إن كانت طاعة، ويعاقبون عليها إن كانت معصية
Human beings perform voluntary actions: acts of obedience are rewarded and sins are subject to punishment.

A voluntary act is one in which intention and choice genuinely matter. Prayer, truthful speech, and deliberately withholding another person's right belong to this category. Affirming that God creates the act does not erase the person's intention or responsibility.

The discussion separates two questions: Who creates the act? and In what respect is the human being its agent? Confusing these relations makes reward, punishment, and accountability difficult to understand.

2. Creation and acquisition as distinct relations

One occurrence can bear two different relations. Khalq (creation) concerns bringing an act into existence; kasb (acquisition) concerns its occurrence through the person's intention, choice, and relevant capacity.

Consider deliberately writing a statement. The person intends the act, moves a pen, and is accountable for the words. The occurrence of the act remains under divine creation; nevertheless, attributing the act of writing to the human agent is meaningful and real.

The distinction does not establish two independent creators. God creates, while the servant acquires. It aims to preserve both divine creative sovereignty and human accountability.

3. The claim of absolute compulsion

كما زعمت الجبرية أنه لا فعل للعبد أصلاً
A strongly deterministic Jabarī position denies genuine human action altogether.

On this account, human movement is treated as though it were the movement of an inanimate object, without a relevant difference made by intention or choice. Ordinary experience, however, plainly distinguishes deliberate conduct from involuntary movement.

If humans are not agents in any meaningful sense, assigning commands, rewards, and penalties to their conduct becomes difficult to explain. Affirming divine creation does not by itself establish the denial of all human agency.

4. Trembling versus deliberate movement

لأنا نفرق بالضرورة بين حركة البطش وحركة الارتعاش
We immediately recognize a difference between a hand moved to strike and a hand moving because of a tremor.

The first is ordinarily directed toward a chosen end, whereas the second may occur without the person's control. Both involve physical movement, but the relation to intention and choice is different.

The difference cannot always be read from outward appearance alone. Two movements may look similar while arising from very different states of control and intention. Moral responsibility therefore cannot be inferred merely from the presence of bodily motion.

5. Capacity, will, and intention

Capacity, will, and intention are related but distinct concepts. Capacity concerns ability to perform an action; will concerns preference or selection among possibilities; intention concerns undertaking an action deliberately.

Someone may be able to walk yet choose to remain seated. Another person's leg may move because of an involuntary spasm. Both cases involve bodily capacities, but their relation to voluntary agency differs.

These distinctions do not establish human creative independence from God. They explain what is relevant to attributing an act to a morally accountable person.

6. Real attribution of acts to persons

ولا إسناد الأفعال التي تقتضي سابقة القصد والاختيار إليه على سبيل الحقيقة
Denying meaningful choice undermines the genuine attribution of deliberate acts to the person performing them.

Expressions such as ṣallā, kataba, ṣāma—he prayed, wrote, and fasted—name acts performed by a human agent. They are not empty grammatical conventions; they communicate an actual relation between a person and conduct.

The act is truly the person's act, even though the person is not an independent creator of its existence. The two statements speak about different aspects of the same event.

7. Scriptural attribution of deeds

جَزَاءً بِمَا كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ
As a recompense for what they used to do. (Qur'an 32:17)

فَمَنْ شَاءَ فَلْيُؤْمِنْ وَمَنْ شَاءَ فَلْيَكْفُرْ
Whoever wills may believe, and whoever wills may disbelieve. (Qur'an 18:29)

These passages attribute deeds and choices to humans and connect actions with consequences. The first relates recompense to conduct; the second places voluntary choice within a context of accountability.

Attributing choice does not imply that people create independently of God, just as affirming God's encompassing will does not render these textual attributions meaningless.

8. Does divine foreknowledge compel?

A classical objection asks: if God eternally knows which act a person will perform, how could the event differ from that knowledge? If it cannot differ, what remains of choice?

The response distinguishes an event corresponding to true knowledge from an event being coerced by knowledge. Knowledge is a true relation to what occurs; its truth alone does not turn the person's intention into compulsion.

Prior accurate knowledge of an action performed voluntarily does not by itself remove its voluntary character. The key is to distinguish certainty of knowledge from necessity imposed upon the agent.

9. Knowledge and divine volition

يعلم ويريد أن العبد يفعله أو يتركه باختياره، فلا إشكال
God knows and wills the servant's doing or leaving an act in the manner of that servant's choice.

The action is not known merely as a physical occurrence; it is known as a voluntary action. The relation of divine knowledge and will to it does not erase that description.

A person's omission of an obligation can be sinful while remaining within divine knowledge and volition. It is therefore essential not to treat knowledge, volition, command, and approval as interchangeable terms.

10. Necessity of occurrence versus choice

The objection uses expressions of inevitability and impossibility: if divine knowledge is true, the known act must occur. The answer does not allow divine knowledge to be mistaken. Instead, it clarifies that what is known is the person's voluntary doing or omitting of the act.

Certainty that an act will occur is not identical with the claim that the agent is forced against the will. The action is known precisely under its voluntary description.

The distinction is between the necessity that true knowledge not be false and a supposed necessity of coercion imposed on the agent.

11. Choice in obedience and disobedience

One person prays; another knowingly neglects prayer. The first action is obedience, the second a culpable omission. Both events occur within divine creation, yet their religious evaluations are different.

Divine will concerns what occurs; divine command concerns what is required; and approval concerns what is pleasing. The occurrence of a sin does not make that sin approved or permitted.

Without these distinctions, one might infer that anything that happens must be lawful or praiseworthy. Occurrence and moral permissibility are not the same.

12. An obligatory or forbidden act can be chosen

فإن قيل: فيكون فعله الاختياري واجباً أو ممتنعاً
An objection says that if the action or omission is certain according to divine knowledge, voluntary action has become necessary or impossible.

The response is that necessity through an act's being chosen is not the same as the absence of choice. What is certain is the occurrence of the act in the manner in which the person chooses it.

If it is known that someone will freely keep a promise, that knowledge does not remove the person's intention to honor it. Logical implication must not be confused with psychological or practical coercion.

13. Two powers and one action

إن المقدور الواحد داخل تحت قدرتين لكن بجهتين مختلفتين
A single possible act falls under two powers, but in different respects.

Its existence and origination are ascribed to God's power, while its voluntary acquisition is related to the servant's created capacity. This does not posit two independent creators, because the respective relations do not mean the same thing.

If creation and acquisition are treated as identical, the argument wrongly moves toward either denying choice or assigning humans independent creative power. Identifying the distinct respects avoids this false alternative.

14. A shared object does not entail identical causation

How can one act relate to two powers? The answer keeps one act as the object while distinguishing two ways of relating to it. A person's writing is one occurrence, but creating the act and performing it voluntarily are not the same sort of relation.

Competition between independent creative causes would arise only if the two powers were asserted to originate the same act in precisely the same independent sense. Kasb, however, concerns the human agent's voluntary involvement and accountability.

Using the word power in both contexts does not make the two powers equally independent. Divine power is uncreated and independent; human capacity is granted and limited.

15. Acquisition through capacity, creation through divine power

الكسب واقع بالآلة، والخلق لا بالآلة
Acquisition occurs with a granted capacity or instrument; divine creation is not dependent on a created instrument.

Here instrument points to the servant's created ability and the ordinary means through which conduct occurs. Hands, bodily faculties, and intention matter for the human performance of an action, but they do not make the person an independent source of existence.

The distinction between a customary means and an independent creator is helpful. Something may ordinarily occur through an instrument without that instrument possessing self-sufficient creative power.

16. Differences in Ashʿarī and Māturīdī explanations

Within Sunni theology, there are technical differences in explaining kasb and the servant's power. Ashʿarī accounts address the efficacy of created power in one manner; Māturīdī presentations place more explicit emphasis on the servant's directing capacity and will toward an act.

This should not be read as one school denying divine creation and the other rejecting all agency. Both aim to uphold divine oneness and human accountability; their disagreement concerns the technical analysis of acquisition.

Absolute compulsion and independent human creation are distinct, more radical alternatives to these approaches.

17. Directing capacity and will toward action

أن صرف العبد قدرته وإرادته إلى الفعل كسب، وإيجاد الله تعالى الفعل عقب ذلك خلق
The servant's directing capacity and will toward an action is acquisition, while God's bringing the action into existence is creation.

Ṣarf means applying or directing one's capacity and will. In this account the human element is not merely a label: the act can be meaningfully attributed to the agent for praise or blame.

The phrase following that should not be mistaken for a period of creative independence or a necessity imposed on God. It distinguishes the human involvement from the divine bringing-into-existence of the event.

18. Preferring action or omission and obligation

In many situations the person can consider doing and refraining from an action. Religious obligation addresses someone able, under the relevant conditions, to understand the command and direct conduct accordingly.

For example, a person can intend either to return a trust or to withhold it. Divine creation applies to what occurs, but returning the trust is commendable and betraying it is blameworthy.

Choice is not equivalent to independence from God's will. It is a feature of the servant's action and accountability, not a license to claim autonomous creative power.

19. The objection of partnership in creation

An objection says that if both divine and human power relate to a single action, this introduces partnership in creation. The answer is that such partnership would require both to be independent creators in precisely the same respect.

An artisan and an instrument can illustrate how one action admits different descriptions, although such an analogy is not a complete model of divine attributes. Its limited purpose is to explain difference of relation.

Creation belongs to divine power; acquisition describes the servant's voluntary participation. The account does not posit two gods or two self-sufficient creative agents.

20. Good and bad acts in relation to acquisition

فقد يفعل الحسن، وقد يفعل القبيح
A human being may perform what is good or what is reprehensible.

Blame for a sinful act concerns the agent's deliberate undertaking of what is prohibited. The fact that the event is created does not change its moral judgment. Praise for a good deed likewise concerns its being voluntarily performed and religiously commendable.

The schools differ on further questions concerning good and bad, but the central point here is that the creator of an act and the agent morally addressed by a command are not equivalent descriptions.

21. Creation of a bad act and divine wisdom

A further objection asks whether God's creating an evil action makes God morally blameworthy for that evil. The response distinguishes bringing an event into existence from committing a prohibited action.

The act is blameworthy insofar as the human agent deliberately performs what is forbidden. Its existence within divine creation, knowledge, and wisdom does not turn the event into God's violation of a command.

Affirming power and creation is not the same as affirming pleasure and approval. Divine will encompasses events, but divine approval does not extend to everything that occurs.

22. Distinct senses of good and bad

Ḥusn and qubḥ do not always carry one technical sense. They can refer to what pleases or displeases human nature, to perfection and deficiency, or to what deserves praise, blame, reward, or punishment.

A bitter medicine may be unpleasant to the taste yet beneficial in treatment. Likewise, an action that appears attractive is not necessarily religiously permitted.

When an act is called bad, the relevant respect must be specified: sensory aversion, rational perfection or imperfection, or legal and moral responsibility. Without this distinction disputants may answer different questions while using the same words.

23. The legal and moral evaluation of acts

In questions of praise, blame, reward, and punishment, the person's status as morally accountable and the act's voluntary attribution are central. Deliberately doing good is praiseworthy; knowingly committing a prohibition is blameworthy.

Assessing an action requires distinguishing intention, choice, the relevant command, and the circumstances of occurrence. Not every bodily result carries the same responsibility.

Intentionally injuring someone and causing injury through an involuntary accident, for example, are not automatically identical moral or legal cases. Such contrasts clarify why choice matters.

24. Will, volition, approval, and love

الإرادة والمشيئة والتقدير يتعلق بالكل، والرضا والمحبة والأمر لا يتعلق إلا بالحسن دون القبيح
Will, volition, and determination encompass what occurs; divine approval, love, and religious command concern what is good.

This returns to the distinction made in the study of decree: God permits an event to occur and creates it within divine will does not mean God commands or approves that event.

A sinful act takes place within divine knowledge and will, while its prohibition remains in force. Separating these relations avoids both absolute determinism and the claim that occurrence itself makes a deed morally acceptable.

25. Synthesis: accountability without independent creation

العبد كاسب، والله تعالى خالق
The servant acquires the act, while God creates it.

A person's real agency, intention, and granted capacity ground accountability; the act's existence does not escape divine creation or will. The discussion therefore rejects both absolute compulsion and independent human creative sovereignty.

Its central distinctions are voluntary versus involuntary movement, creation versus acquisition, foreknowledge versus coercion, two powers relating in distinct respects, and the occurrence of an act versus divine approval of it. Confusing any of these weakens the argument.

The next subject, istiṭāʿah, examines the nature of a person's capacity for action and its precise relation to the performance of the act.