and without any regard for justice; or else one may adopt the position of the Qadariyya, who maintain that justice is incumbent upon Him in the very same way that it is incumbent upon created beings; or else one may say that He is just, exalted above all injustice, yet His justice is not like the justice of the creature. These, then, are the three opinions people hold.

If the first position is taken, it would be permissible for God to let Iblis loose upon the whole of Adam’s progeny with no sin on their part and to punish them all without any offense; in that case the entire stratagem against Iblis would be pointless.

If the second position is taken, it is obvious that, were a man to learn that one of his slaves had ordered another to do something the master hates, and the subordinate carried it out, justice would require him to punish both the one who gave the order and the one who obeyed it. But to empower the instigator to punish the subordinate is not justice; nor is it just to give that oppressive instigator authority over all the offspring of the subordinate—people who never perpetrated their forefather’s sin.

If it is argued, “Rather, he deserved to enslave them because their father obeyed him,” we reply: in that case he would deserve to capture all generations, early and late, and it would be impermissible to deprive him of that ‘right’ by means of any stratagem.

If it is said, “He is entitled to seize them only for their own sins,” we reply that on those grounds he may seize both earlier and later generations alike.

And if it is said, “When he sought to claim the soul of the Messiah’s human nature he was barred on account of that sin,” we answer: even if that were a sin, it is the lightest of his sins, for he did not know that it was the humanity of God. Now, if a man were entitled to enslave another’s children and then set out to seize a particular person