timeremains for humans to execute it. This position implies a righteous com-
munity of saints that knows the divine law and practices it. This type of
society opposes communities that do neither. Thus salvation is achieved
through membership in the righteous sect that is called the People of
Paradise, in sharp contrast to the People of Hell. If a member of the former
group associates with anyone from the latter group, that person imperils the
salvation of the entire community. In contrast to this position, the Murji’ites
want to postpone judgment until the last day when a sinner’s fate is decided
by God, which implies that one should desist from passing judgment on the
grave sinner. Taking a neutral position between the prophet’s grandson Ali
and his opponents, the Mu’tazilites reject the deterministic interpretation
of the Qur’an in order to save God’s goodness and to make an individual
responsible for their deeds by arguing for free will. Since an individual’s
actions emanate from oneself, the individual is a responsible being. If an
individual does not have free will, it is unjust for God to hold one respon-
sible for a person’s actions. A consequence of this argument is that God,
who is necessarily just, cannot do what is unreasonable and unjust. This
suggests that divine omnipotence is limited by the requirements of justice
as in the doctrine of promise and threat, which means that God can neither
pardon an evil-doer and violate His threat nor punish the righteous person
and violate His promise. This type of theological position leads to the law
of compensation that rewards those unjustly enduring pain and suffering
on earth and compensates them in paradise. Finally, the Ash’arite school
argues that all human acts are created by God, but the acts attach them-
selves to the will of an individual who thus acquires them. This line of
argument results in the conviction that all power rests with God while all
responsibility remains with human beings.Further reading: Hick (1973); Küng (1976); McGrath (1994); Rahman (1966);
Smith (1963, 1981)
TIME
An elusive and mysterious concept that is difficult to define, although it
is possible to see evidence of time in nature with old trees, old homes,
and old people. Finding themselves within and subject to time, humans
attempt to measure it using clocks, but this type of measurement of time
is not lived time. Three moments of time can be identified – past, present,
and future – with the present representing the now moment, the past what
has been, and the future what will be.