Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD

Introduction

Classical theism in the Abrahamic faiths holds that God is omnipotent and omniscient – ultimately in control of every event and aware of every detail of the universe. One medieval theological idea, occasionalism, takes this to its extreme: God is the sole true cause of all occurrences, with created things having no inherent causal power thequran.love. This paints a picture of God as a cosmic puppeteer, directly orchestrating every motion of the “puppets” (the creation). Yet the same traditions also uphold human free will and moral responsibility. How can humans have genuine freedom if God’s will alone moves everything? This essay explores that paradox through theological, philosophical, and scientific lenses. We examine how occasionalism can be reconciled with free will – assuming God’s ultimate control – by drawing insights from quantum mechanics and the concept of extra dimensions. Recent writings by Zia H. Shah MD (a commentator on science and religion) will guide our discussion on how an all-controlling God and genuine human choice might coherently coexist in a richer framework of reality.

Occasionalism: God as the Sole Cause

In Islamic theology, the debate over causation and free will goes back over a millennium. The Muʿtazilite theologians (8th–10th century) emphasized human free will and accepted that God endowed natural objects with stable causal properties. In their view, God created substances with attributes (for example, fire has the attribute of burning), so ordinarily fire will burn cotton – yet God remains omnipotent and could override these natural causes with a miracle thequran.love. By contrast, the Ashʿarite school, and notably Abu Hamid al-Ghazālī (1058–1111), were wary of assigning any real causal power to creatures, seeing it as detracting from God’s absolute sovereignty. Al-Ghazālī’s doctrine of occasionalism asserts that what we call cause and effect is illusory habit: no object or force truly causes any outcome by itself – God directly causes every effect at every moment thequran.love. A famous example in al-Ghazālī’s writings is that fire does not inherently burn cotton; rather, each time a flame meets cotton, God creates the burning effect then and there thequran.love. The regularities of nature (like fire usually burning things) are simply God’s customs or habits in governing the universe, not due to any physical necessity residing in matter. This means natural laws are descriptive, not prescriptive – they describe how God usually does things, but they do not bind Him thequran.love.

From the occasionalist perspective, the cosmos is sustained by continuous divine action rather than autonomous natural processes. The Qur’an itself vividly emphasizes God’s ongoing role. For instance, Surah Saba 34:1–4 praises God’s complete knowledge of all that enters or leaves the earth and states that “not even the weight of a speck of dust in the heavens or earth escapes His knowledge”, with all events “recorded in a clear Record” thequran.love. In the same chapter, verse 22 declares that no being other than God has “even an atom’s weight” of power or share in the governance of the universe thequran.love. Such scripture underpins the idea that ultimate causation belongs solely to God, aligning with occasionalism’s claim that every motion of a dust mote, every spark of a flame, occurs by His command. In effect, creation is like a shadow play where God alone handles the lamp and the puppets’ strings.

Yet, if God is the only real actor, what becomes of human freedom? Ashʿarite theologians developed the theory of kasb (“acquisition”) to affirm a form of free will without ceding causal power to humans. They argued that when a person chooses to act, God creates in that person the capacity (or “power”) to perform the deed at that very moment, and God simultaneously creates the deed itself in the world thequran.love. The human thus “acquires” the act by willing it, while God produces the actual effect. In this way, the choice is ours, but the creation of the outcome is God’s – preserving His total control even as we experience ourselves as making decisions. This clever theological model attempts to resolve the puppetry paradox: the human “puppet” moves by God’s hand, but not against its own will; the puppet’s will is also given by God, yet the puppet is conscious of making a choice and is therefore held accountable for it. As al-Ghazālī would contend, God’s omnipotence and human responsibility are compatible once we recognize that secondary causes (including human volition) are not true movers but part of God’s plan thequran.love thequran.love. Our freedom is real in the sense of choosing our intent, and God, in His justice, bases reward or punishment on those choices – all the while, nothing happens unless He decrees it.

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