Two positions press from either side. If God creates human acts, punishing a person for them looks unjust. If human beings create their own acts, then something is being created that God did not create. Al-Ashari proposed that God creates the act and the agent acquires it, so that the power to act is real at the moment of acting without being an independent creative power. Maturidi theology took a similar line with a larger role for human choice. The Mutazila rejected acquisition as an evasion, holding that a human being is the real author of their own acts, since God cannot justly punish an act He alone created; divine justice, for them, required nothing less. Traditionalist Hanbali writers were unhappy with the whole exchange, regarding the vocabulary as speculative theology imported into a question the texts had already answered. Later Muslim philosophers treated acquisition as a term that names the difficulty rather than resolving it.
Facts
Origins
Held ByThe Ashari and, with more room for human choice, Maturidi schools of Sunni theology, who hold that God creates the act while the human being acquires responsibility for it; rejected by the Mutazila, who held a human being to be the real author of their own acts. 1 Origin of the NameArabic kasb, acquisition or earning. 1Tradition: Arabic Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 1Tradition: Sunni Doctrinal Category Position Profile
Principal ProponentAl-Ashari; Maturidi theology took a similar line while leaving a larger role for human choice. 1 Principal CriticThe Mutazila, who rejected acquisition as an evasion and held that a human being is the real author of their own acts, since God cannot justly punish an act He alone created. 1 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceGod creates the act and the human being acquires it, so that the power to act is real at the moment of acting without being an independent creative power. 1 Disputed
Point in DisputeWhether acquisition resolves the difficulty or only names it. Traditionalist Hanbali writers objected to the whole exchange as speculative theology imported into a question the texts had already answered, and later Muslim philosophers treated the term as a label for the problem. 1 Learn More
The Name Its Own Opponents Chose for Them
The school that argued hardest for human free will in early Islam is remembered today by a name its opponents gave it, and the name says the opposite of what the school believed. Qadar means decree or determination, the very thing these theologians denied applied absolutely to human acts, yet the label Qadariyya stuck to defenders of free will rather than to the determinists who might seem to own the word by right. Watt traces the reversal to how the debate was actually fought, each side accusing the other of holding qadar in the wrong sense, predestinarians charging that denying divine determination amounted to denying qadar altogether, and the accusation outlived the argument that produced it, fixing itself as a name imposed from outside rather than chosen from within. The Mutazila, direct heirs of the position, resented the label enough to prefer calling themselves the people of justice instead, arguing precisely that a God who determines an act and then punishes it commits injustice, so justice rather than destiny was the word they wanted attached to their theology. Kasb, acquisition, was the settlement a later generation reached between the two accusations, letting God remain the sole creator of the act while giving the human agent enough of a stake in it to be justly judged, a formula built to satisfy both sides and satisfying neither side fully.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Acquisition is the Ashari answer to human responsibility: God creates the act and the human being acquires it, which is meant to preserve God's sole creative power without leaving the human act unowned.
Critiqued By
Mutazila, Schools of Theology The Mutazila rejected acquisition as an evasion, holding that a human being is the real author of their own acts, since God cannot justly punish an act He alone created.
Positions on This Question
Kasb, acquisition, is the Sunni answer to how a person can be answerable for an act God creates, and is held in the Ashari and Maturidi forms that dominate Sunni theology.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.