Free Will in Theology
In the Christian faith, it is taught at a young age that God gave man free will in order to make one’s own decisions, however time and time again, both throughout history and the Bible, as well as other religious texts, that man abuses the power to make their own decisions and falls away from their gods in order to do what is superficially beneficial to themselves. From Eve being influenced by Lucifer and eating the apple of her own free will, to more modern examples of free will being used to feed man’s greed, all religions discuss the duality of free will, both the freedom it brings, but also the ways that having free will causes man to stray from their respected religious path. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis argues that …show more content…
Free will and predestination are debated fiercely between two schools of thought, Mu’tazili and Hanbali. The Mu’tazili flourished in the cities of Basra and Baghdad, both in present-day Iraq, during the 8th–10th centuries, the Golden Age of Islam. The Mu`tazili are best known rejecting the status of the Qur’an as uncreated and co-eternal with God, asserting that if the Quran is God 's word, logically God "must have preceded his own speech" (Kadri 77). In contrast the Hanbali school follows the Qur’an, the Hadiths, and the views of the Sahabah, the prophets who were the companions to Muhammad, in cases where there is no clear answer in the sacred texts of Islam, “the Hanbali school does not accept jurist discretion or the customs of a community as a sound basis to derive Islamic law, a method that Hanafi and Maliki Sunni [teachings] accept” (Hishman 25). These two schools of thought have differing opinions on what free will is. For the Mu’tazili free will is qadar, or the ability to do right and wrong, then based on that choice, what punishment or reward man deserves, “whereas Hanbali insisted on God 's jabr, or total power and initiative in managing all events” (Denny 157). These two contrasting schools reflect a similar debate in Christianity over predestination. Where Lutheranism states that those who seek God are going to be saved, the Calvinists believe that no matter what you do, certain people are going to be saved, and who is saved is predetermined at their birth. Some Muslims believe that predestination is when God wrote down in the Preserved Tablet the past, present and the future of all people. The Preserved Tablet is a tablet in which the past, present and future are supposedly written in, or it is also known as the Book of Faith. According to this belief, what man does is not influenced by the tablet, rather it is happening because God has
In the Christian faith, it is taught at a young age that God gave man free will in order to make one’s own decisions, however time and time again, both throughout history and the Bible, as well as other religious texts, that man abuses the power to make their own decisions and falls away from their gods in order to do what is superficially beneficial to themselves. From Eve being influenced by Lucifer and eating the apple of her own free will, to more modern examples of free will being used to feed man’s greed, all religions discuss the duality of free will, both the freedom it brings, but also the ways that having free will causes man to stray from their respected religious path. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis argues that …show more content…
Free will and predestination are debated fiercely between two schools of thought, Mu’tazili and Hanbali. The Mu’tazili flourished in the cities of Basra and Baghdad, both in present-day Iraq, during the 8th–10th centuries, the Golden Age of Islam. The Mu`tazili are best known rejecting the status of the Qur’an as uncreated and co-eternal with God, asserting that if the Quran is God 's word, logically God "must have preceded his own speech" (Kadri 77). In contrast the Hanbali school follows the Qur’an, the Hadiths, and the views of the Sahabah, the prophets who were the companions to Muhammad, in cases where there is no clear answer in the sacred texts of Islam, “the Hanbali school does not accept jurist discretion or the customs of a community as a sound basis to derive Islamic law, a method that Hanafi and Maliki Sunni [teachings] accept” (Hishman 25). These two schools of thought have differing opinions on what free will is. For the Mu’tazili free will is qadar, or the ability to do right and wrong, then based on that choice, what punishment or reward man deserves, “whereas Hanbali insisted on God 's jabr, or total power and initiative in managing all events” (Denny 157). These two contrasting schools reflect a similar debate in Christianity over predestination. Where Lutheranism states that those who seek God are going to be saved, the Calvinists believe that no matter what you do, certain people are going to be saved, and who is saved is predetermined at their birth. Some Muslims believe that predestination is when God wrote down in the Preserved Tablet the past, present and the future of all people. The Preserved Tablet is a tablet in which the past, present and future are supposedly written in, or it is also known as the Book of Faith. According to this belief, what man does is not influenced by the tablet, rather it is happening because God has