withhold His mercy?’ Say, ‘Allah is sufficient for me. In Him do those who trust put their trust.’” There are many similar passages in the Quran. Once the ambiguity and multiple meanings of “causal efficacy” are understood, the misconception is dispelled and the balanced position between the two groups becomes clear.

Whoever says that the believer and the unbeliever are equal in the causes conducive to faith that Allah has bestowed upon them; that Allah has not specially granted the believer any capacity or volition through which he came to believe; and that, when the servant acts, he gains no assistance from Allah or volition that he did not have before the act—his position is plainly false.

These people may be told: The servant’s action is itself one of the contingent things that come into being. Thus, every argument establishing that Allah Most High brought something else into being also establishes that Allah brought this action into being. The servant’s becoming an agent after not having been one is a contingent occurrence. If this contingent occurrence could arise without a necessarily existent originator to bring it into being and give precedence to its existence over its nonexistence, the same would be possible for other things, thereby invalidating the proof establishing the Creator’s existence.

There is no doubt that many speculative theologians who uphold affirmation and believe in divine decree conceded to the Muʿtazilah that an agent possessed of power and choice can favor one of two alternatives within his power over the other without a determining factor. On “the question of bringing the world into being,” they said that the agent possessed of power and choice—or the eternal will, whose relation to all events and times is the same—favored certain kinds of contingent things at the time it favored, without any cause arising to necessitate that preference. They claimed that an agent possessed of power and choice can favor one alternative without a determining factor, or that the eternal will can favor one alternative without any further determining factor. At this point, objections were raised against them by their opponents among the adherents of religious traditions and the philosophers who hold that Allah brings events into being