is like one who has no sin, and all agree that one who has repented may not be blamed.

Moreover, Adam invoked divine decree in his argument, yet no one may invoke divine decree to justify sin, as Muslims, adherents of all other religions, and all other rational people agree. If this were acceptable, anyone could commit whatever occurred to him—killing people, seizing their wealth, or perpetrating any other form of corruption on earth—and invoke divine decree as his excuse. Yet the very person who invokes divine decree will not accept this excuse from someone who wrongs him. He thus contradicts himself, and a position’s inconsistency demonstrates its invalidity. The invalidity of invoking divine decree as an excuse is therefore evident even to the most elementary reason.

Whoever supposes that belief in divine decree consists in believing that Allah is the Creator of His servants’ deeds—as supposed by the polytheistic antinomians, who acknowledge divine decree but not divine commands, and the Magian Qadarites, who acknowledge divine commands but not divine decree—or supposes that, given this, imposing religious obligations is unintelligible, but that the Lawgiver is obeyed in this solely because of the divine will, and that Allah acts; and makes this his argument concerning deeds, without including reasons appropriate to commands and prohibitions, but instead denies the benefits, merits, and purposes that the revealed law contains for people in this life and the Hereafter; reduces that law to a mere attribution, without any correspondence or congruity between cause and effect; and denies that deeds have qualities by virtue of which they are good and commanded, or evil and forbidden, invoking divine decree as his argument for this and maintaining that, since the Lord is the Creator, all of this is impossible—