[Response to the Fifth Question]

The answer is:

Although people have frequently disputed this expression, some rejecting it and others affirming it, it should be understood that the actual disagreement concerns two kinds of cases:

The first concerns what people agree is permissible and does occur; they disagree only over describing it as beyond one’s capacity.

The second concerns what they agree is beyond one’s capacity, but they disagree over whether it is permissible to command it. They do not dispute that such a command has not actually been issued.

There is, however, no case in which the people of knowledge and faith agree that something is beyond one’s capacity yet disagree over whether a command to perform it has actually been issued.

[The Dispute among Speculative Thinkers over Capacity]

The first kind includes the disagreement among theologians who affirm divine decree and those who deny it concerning a person’s capacity—that is, his ability and power: must it accompany the act rather than precede it? Must it precede the act? Or must it accompany the act, even if it also precedes it?

The first view entails that every person who fails to do what he has been commanded has been charged with something beyond his capacity, since he possesses no capacity except when performing the act. Thus, the correct view, held by discerning theologians, scholars of jurisprudence and hadith, Sufis, and others, is what the Quran indicates: the capacity upon which commands and prohibitions depend, and which makes the act possible, need not coincide with the act. By contrast, the capacity whose presence necessarily entails the occurrence of the act does coincide with it.