Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/96

 claim that it was untreated because the conclusions to be drawn seemed to them to introduce distinct personalities corresponding to the persons of the Christian Trinity, and in these views they were undoubtedly influenced by the form in which St. John Damascene presented the doctrine of the Trinity. As it was implied that there was an attribute of wisdom possessed by God which was not a thing created by God but eternally with him, and this wisdom may be conceived as not absolutely identical with God but possessed by him, the Mu'tazilites argued that it was something co-eternal with God but other than God, and so an eternal Qur'an was a second person of the Godhead and God was not absolutely one. Al-Muzdar, a Mu'tazilite greatly revered as an ascetic, expressly denounces those who believe in an eternal Qur'an as ditheists. The Mu'tazilites called themselves Ahlu t-Tawhid wa-l-'Adl "the people of unity and justice," the first part of this title implying that they alone were consistent defenders of the doctrine of the Divine Unity.

(b) As to the freedom or otherwise of the human will, the Qur'an is perfectly definite in its assertion of God's omnipotence and omniscience: all things are known to him and ruled by him, and so human acts and the rewards and punishments due to men must be included: "no misfortune happens either on earth or in yourselves but we made it,—it was in the book" (Qur. 57. 22); "everything have We set down in the clear book of our decrees" (Qur. 36);