Fakhr al-Rāzī’s Appeal to the Verse to Prove Determinism and its Response

The Ashʿarīs have used the verse “Indeed, you will never be able to have patience with me” to argue against the existence of capability before an action, and Fakhr al-Rāzī emphasizes this and writes that our companions (the Ashʿarīs) have argued from this verse that capability does not exist before an action, because if capability for an action existed before its occurrence, then surely the capability for patience would have existed for Moses before the occurrence of patience. The necessary consequence of this statement would be that God’s words “Indeed, you will never be able to have patience with me” would be false, and since the falsehood of divine speech is impossible, capability certainly does not exist before an action.

He then relates the critique of al-Jubbāʾī—who is from the Muʿtazilites—regarding this statement, that the meaning of “you will never be able to have patience” is that patience was difficult for Moses, not that he lacked the capability for patience. In common usage, it is said “Indeed, so-and-so cannot bear to see so-and-so,” meaning that seeing him is difficult for that person, like the verse “They were not able to hear”(178), meaning that listening was difficult for them.

Then, in critiquing al-Jubbāʾī’s statement, he writes that his interpretation deviates from the apparent meaning without any evidence or proof, and this is not permissible. Furthermore, the subsequent verse which states “How can you have patience with that which you have not encompassed in knowledge” considers it unlikely for one to have patience with something of which one does not know the reality. If capability existed before an action, then the power to know would also exist before acquiring that knowledge, and in this case, patience would have been possible even without knowledge, because when someone is capable of something, their undertaking of that action is not improbable. When God ruled on the improbability of our patience, we become certain that capability does not exist before an action.(179)

Fakhr al-Rāzī’s response to al-Jubbāʾī is incorrect, because one should not disregard the conventions of discourse and literary expression. In many cases, when something is difficult, it is expressed as a negation of capability. If these conventions of discourse are taken into account, it is not easy to derive from divine speech the negation of capability before a future action, such that the problem of falsehood would arise. Moreover, the core issue requires separate investigation, rather than relying merely on the apparent meaning of words.