they maintained that the servant’s will arises without an agent bringing it into being. Thus, they denied an efficient cause for the will, while affirming its final cause. They say: “He intended only to show kindness to creation,” and the like.
Their opponents among the Ash'arīs and others affirmed an efficient cause for the servant’s will and affirmed that Allah has an eternal will encompassing all occurrences. Yet they did not affirm for it an intended wise purpose or a praiseworthy outcome. Thus, the latter were like those who affirm an efficient cause but no final cause, while the former were like those who affirm a final cause but no efficient cause.
[The Philosophers’ Views]
The Peripatetic philosophers claim to affirm both efficient and final causes, explaining the occurrences in the world in terms of causes and wise purposes.
Upon examination, however, they are far more contradictory than those speculative theologians: they affirm neither an efficient nor a final cause. Their position effectively amounts to saying that occurrences come into being without anyone bringing them into being, because an eternal complete cause necessarily entails its effect, and nothing can newly arise from it.
Their position also effectively amounts to saying that the acts of the Lord Most High contain neither wisdom nor any praiseworthy outcome, because they deny His will and say: “He is not an agent acting by choice.” Whoever denies will has all the more reason to deny the end sought through it—the wise purpose constituting its final cause. Hence, their confusion and contradictions in this matter are greater than those of the various religious communities, as has been explained at length elsewhere.
The purpose here is to draw attention to the principal positions of the major schools and the contradictions they contain, and to show that whoever opposes the divine texts with what he calls rational arguments opposes them only with discourse of this kind—the furthest extent of their endeavours and the utmost object of their striving, and the limit of their intellects