Ibn Taymiyya on Causality

         Ibn Taymiyya rejects the Asharite claim of occasionalism and therefore claims that all created things are subject to causality. However, an effect does not rely on one cause rather a confluence of other causes and obstacles that need to be absent for the effect to occur. Therefore, for Allah (God in Arabic) to create an effect, He completes the causes and removes the obstacles and these causes and obstacles are part of the Divine Decree. If an effect does not occur then the causes are not completed and the obstacles are not removed. Furthermore, there is no being that is created that can be an efficient cause since it is created. Rather, Allah is the only efficient cause and Allah is the one who makes causes effective. Therefore, one should not solely rely on causes but on Allah who is the creator of causes. Furthermore, an individual must fulfill these causes. Without the causes and the removal of obstacles, there will not be any effect and Allah is the creator who empowers these causes in accordance with His wisdom and justice which is for the love and benefit of humanity. Created things cause effects as well that are created by Allah and this is known through our experience of the world. Human beings have free will who have power to act casually but Allah is the creator of their actions. He creates an effect through as many causes as He wills until the matter returns to the first cause which is His Will but the term first cause will be quantified later. The will attached to creatures is originated as creatures are originated. Perhaps then the Will is not eternal that applies to all things because then everything will also be eternal so perhaps there is an eternal Will that is general and a different Will for the specific. Since everything besides Allah is originated, He has a successive and dynamic will that always existed as His attribute. For change to occur in this world, Ibn Taymiyya also claimed that there must be voluntary acts in Allah’s essence and these acts are uncreated as there are no created things that subsist in His essence but their effects are created as Allah can go from speaking to Moses and to not speaking to Moses. As there are no created things that subsist in His essence, Allah’s successive willings do not entail change in His essence. The Quran is uncreated as it is the Words of Allah and His Acts are His attributes as well. This applies to human recitation as well as our recitations are uncreated however our act of recitation are created.

Whatever Allah wills exists and whatever He does not will does not exist. Human actions are ontologically decreed by Allah and created by Him, He has rendered our performance, as humans also possess power and will to carry out deed, of what He commanded to be the causes of salvation and He is never unjust. For the final cause of an effect to occur God must allow it as one cause is not independently sufficient rather other causes assist and obstacles need to be removed and as stated, God must allow it to be an efficient cause. Therefore, relying on causes alone is a form of polytheism while rejecting causes altogether is the denial of the Divine Decree and pure reason. Individuals can be part of one of the many causes that lead to an effect. Perhaps, therefore, whatever effects occur as a result of an individual’s good actions (including good intent) will be recorded as a good deed because their actions were causes leading to the effect. Ultimately, one good’s deeds will not bring them into paradise but only the grace of Allah’s mercy will and He knew all the deeds you would perform before it came into existence.

“One’s good deeds will not make him enter Paradise.’ They [the Companions] asked, ‘Even you, O Allah’s Messenger?’ He replied, ‘Even I, until and unless Allah bestows His grace and mercy on me.”

Furthermore, it can be interpreted that people who are destined for hell and for paradise are created to perform acts concordant to their destination.

“We were in a funeral in the graveyard of Gharqad when Allah’s Messenger ﷺ came to us and we sat around him. He had a stick with him. He lowered his head and began to scratch the earth with his stick, and then said: There is not one amongst you whom a seat in Paradise or Hell has not been allotted and about whom it has not been written down whether he would be an evil person or a blessed person. A person said: Allah's Messenger, should we not then depend upon our destiny and abandon our deeds? Thereupon he said: Acts of everyone will be facilitated in that which has been created for him so that whoever belongs to the company of the blessed will have good works made easier for him and whoever belongs to the unfortunate ones will have evil acts made easier for him. He then recited this verse (from the Qur'an): “Then, who gives to the needy and guards against evil and accepts the excellent (the truth of Islam and the path of righteousness it prescribes), We shall make easy for him the easy end and who is miserly and considers himself above need, We shall make easy for him the difficult end” (xcii. 5-10).”

All individuals must not rely on their destiny and act. Allah knows all matters and determined their causes and allowed their effect. Just because He knows what one will perform before they act, He does not punish an individual solely due to His foreknowledge. Rather an individual is punished or rewarded after they act.

         It is clear that Ibn Taymiyya affirms secondary causation and no secondary cause can act alone. Human acts can be caused by God’s act of creating directly and He is the creator of human acts. Human acts originate after not existing. Since it is an originating event then there must be an originator. That originator must be either Allah or the human. If it is the human then the act’s originator requires a prior originator and that will lead to an infinite regress which is impossible to all sound minds. Therefore, the originator of human acts and will is God alone. The origination of human acts does not rely on the individual themselves for the creation of the act.

“The shaykh follows al-Razi in insisting on God’s preponderance of the human act, and he maintains the compatibility of this with human accountability by a libertarian account of human agency with the simple existence of a human agency willed and created by God. Ibn Taymiyya maintains that human beings have acts that exist in reality just as they have essences and attributes that are real, but, if human beings may be said to have choice and freedom in the shaykh’s thought, it is strictly in a compatibilist sense.” (Hoover, Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism pg. 154)

         Then can it be said that Allah creates evil when the individual acts sinful? This cannot be the case as Ibn Taymiyya distinguishes between God who is the creator of the act and the human agent by attributing the act solely to the substrate in which the act subsists i.e. the individual. For example, if Allah created a brown rock, this does not mean that God Himself is brown or a rock. Therefore, God cannot be called to account for creating bad acts as He created them in a substrate other than himself. The human act is the act of the human and created by God but the act of the human is not committed by God. Allah is never unjust to his creation and everything He creates is for a wise purpose.