If you are unaware, that is a calamity; but if you are aware, the calamity is far greater.

Those thinkers affirmed a Being who acts by the sheer necessity of His own essence, whose effect follows inevitably from Him while He is stripped of all attributes. This notion is untenable for many reasons—some of which we have already made clear. Another group, for its part, posited a “powerful agent” who can favor one of two identical alternatives without any determinant at all, asserting, “A capable agent is simply one who acts while still able not to act.” This is precisely the doctrine of the Qadariyyah, who claim that the servant may incline toward one of his two possible deeds without any determining factor; and it is likewise the view of the Jahmiyyah and the Qadariyyah concerning the Lord’s own action.

The People of the Sunnah, however, hold that a capable agent never prefers one of two possibilities unless there is a determinant; this principle is one of their arguments against the Qadariyyah. They state that Allah has singled out the obedient with the very favor that inclined them toward obedience over disobedience, unlike the sinners; had He not bestowed that grace upon them, they would never have obeyed Him, as has been explained in detail elsewhere.

When a powerful agent possesses a complete and unrestricted will, the existence of what lies within his power necessarily follows: by His power and will He brings into being whatever He desires. Whatever Allah wills comes to pass, and whatever He does not will cannot occur. Everything the Lord wills must exist, and whatever He does not will is impossible to exist—its necessity derives from the presence of His will, and its impossibility from the absence of His will.

Once the term “capable, volitional agent” is understood in this way, the specious arguments of the philosophers who deny such an agent collapse. Jahm ibn Ṣafwān and those who follow him likewise claim that the capable, volitional agent may prefer one of two identical options without cause or wisdom; consequently they denied the natural properties found in bodies, the wisdom embedded in Allah’s creation and command, and the causal relationships woven into both the created order and the revealed law.