They said:

What Allah meant by His words,

“And when your Lord took from the children of Adam—from their loins—their descendants,”

was simply His bringing them into this world, creating them, and establishing the proof against them by fashioning them and endowing them with innate awareness, such that, once they reached maturity and understanding, they would know that Allah is their Lord.

Those who held all these views then differed over whether this knowledge arises of necessity or is acquired, as we have explained elsewhere).

I say:

The purpose here is not to discuss this verse and its interpretation, or to discuss whether knowledge exists before birth. Rather, the purpose is to establish the innate knowledge that arises after birth. If some who deny the former nevertheless hold that the latter arises of necessity, how much more so those who affirm both?

Among the views he mentioned, two belong to the same category: the view that people were born in accordance with what had already been decreed, or that they were born in that state and had been innately disposed to it since the first covenant, some of them acknowledging willingly or unwillingly. Or two belong to the same category: the view that people were born