Predestination, Human Agency, and the Four Levels of Qadar

A substantial portion of Shifa al-Alil is devoted to the detailed analysis of divine decree (qadar) and its relationship to human agency. This has been one of the central problems in Islamic theology from the earliest period: how can God be the ultimate determinant of all that occurs while human beings are genuinely responsible for their choices and actions?

Ibn al-Qayyim presents the Sunni Athari position on qadar through the framework of four levels or stages. The first level is divine knowledge (ilm): God has known everything that will occur from before the creation, with complete and perfect knowledge that encompasses all events and all agents. The second level is divine writing (kitabah): God wrote all that would occur in the Preserved Tablet (al-Lawh al-Mahfuz) before the creation. The third level is divine will (mashiyyah): everything that occurs is by God's will, and nothing occurs except by it. The fourth level is divine creation (khalq): God creates all things, including human actions, which are created realities just as all other realities are.

The combination of these four levels appears to leave no room for human agency. If God knows, has written, wills, and creates all human actions, in what sense is the human agent genuinely doing anything? Ibn al-Qayyim's response draws on the concept of human acquisition (kasb) but develops it in a more robust direction than some kalam treatments. Human beings have genuine desires, intentions, and choices that are truly their own — not external impositions — even though God is the ultimate creator of all. The human will is real, the human choice is real, the responsibility is real; the divine creation of all of this, including the human will and choice, does not negate the reality of what is created.

He also addresses the question of why God decrees sin and evil if He disapproves of them. This is the hardest question in the theology of divine decree. Ibn al-Qayyim's answer involves the divine wisdom that is the book's central theme: God permits the existence of evil and sin as part of a larger tapestry of purposes that, taken as a whole, reflects wisdom and goodness. The existence of evil allows for the realization of goods — patience, repentance, divine mercy, the contrast that makes the recognition of good possible — that could not exist without it. This is not an attempt to make evil good but an argument that its permission is consistent with divine wisdom when viewed in its full context.

This section of Shifa al-Alil is among the richest in Islamic theological literature on the problem of evil and the theology of divine decree, combining careful doctrinal analysis with practical spiritual guidance.