They further maintained that the lām found in the Qur’an after kay—such as in His statement, “I did not create jinn and mankind except that they may worship Me” (51:56); in His words, “For that end He created them” (11:119); and in His saying, “so that they may become God-fearing” (2:21), and the like—is a lām of ultimate outcome, not a lām of causal purpose. In their view, it is impossible for God to act for the sake of something else or to command something for the sake of something else.

Accordingly, they refuse to acknowledge in the celestial spheres, the sublunar bodies, or in souls any inherent forces that could serve as causes for the coming-into-being of things. Having denied the efficacy of the powers possessed even by animals, they are all the more emphatic in denying it elsewhere. When they set out to answer the philosophers concerning the alleged causes of miracles and other extraordinary events, they simply declare: “The only effective agent in all happenings is the power of God alone; none of those things has any influence at all.” For this reason al-Ash‘arī remarked that the Lord’s most distinctive attribute is His power to originate.

The dispute between these theologians and their opponents turns on two points. First, they do not concede that extraordinary occurrences accompany the causes named by the philosophers. Second, if they do concede such concurrence, they treat it like all other matters whose association is known merely through habit: custom tells us that when a human being eats he grows full, when he drinks he is quenched, and when he strikes with a sword it cuts. Thus, when they maintain that the sole effective cause is the pre-eternal power