Time and Eternity (2/2)

No attempt has been made here to provide a model or to interpret the precise relationship between God and time.

Rather, I want to suggest the futility of such an endeavor. It cannot be otherwise, since our perceptions of time are not objectively real. Conflicts arise precisely because a given interpretation is assumed.

The question, “What is the value of prayer if God has already predestined the future?” assumes that in some way God has a future. That is, it assumes that God is situated in time and peering into a preordained future as we pray. But in order to have a future, one’s existence must be contained within time and, as a result, finite.

The reason this question leads to contradictions is that it assumes a contradiction in the first place—that God both transcends and is finite in time. Any question that assumes two mutually incompatible premises will always result in conflicting conclusions.

Assume, for example, that a circle is a square. With this assumption in mind, we can ask if a circle has corners. If we emphasize the circle’s roundness, then the answer is no. If we concentrate on the properties of a square, the answer is yes. When the consideration of a question inevitably ends in contradiction, it should be asked if the question itself makes sense.

The word “predestination” alone is problematic. If it is used to mean that at some time in the past God programmed all events for the future, the underlying assumption is that God exists in time. If we mean that God’s wisdom and knowledge encompass all and that nothing in creation can conflict with that, then it has to be admitted. But that is not the primary sense of the word “predestine,” which means “to determine in advance.”

It also does not conflict with the idea that God responds to our prayers.

For many Muslim and orientalist scholars, the Qur’anic words qadar and taqdir have come to mean the “absolute decree of good and evil by God”—in other words, that God has preordained all of our acts, even our moral choices. But as Muhammad Ali argues, this doctrine is “neither known to the Holy Qur’an nor even to Arabic lexicology. The doctrine of predestination is of later growth, and seems to have been the result of the clash of Islam with Persian religious thought.”[1]

According to al Raghib al Isfahani, the words qadar and taqdir mean “the making manifest of the measure of a thing,” or simply “measure.” In the Qur’an, they signify the divine laws regulating and balancing creation:

“Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High, Who creates, then makes complete, and Who makes things according to a measure (qaddara, from taqdir), then guides them to their goal.” (Surah Al-A’la, 87:1-3)

“Who created everything, then ordained for it a measure (qadar).” (Surah Al-Qamar, 54:49)

“And the sun runs on to a term appointed for it; that is the ordaining (taqdir) of the Mighty, the Knowing. And as for the moon, We ordained (qaddarnahu, from taqdir) for it stages.” (Surah Ya-Sin, 36:38-39)

“Of what thing did He create him [man]? Of a small life-germ He created him, then He made him according to a measure (qaddarahu).” (Surah Abasa, 80:18-19)

This is not to claim that God subjected the universe to certain natural laws and then abandoned it to let it run its course. No reader of the Qur’an receives this impression. In the Qur’an, God is al Rabb: the Sustainer, Cherisher, Regulator, and Governor of all. He is the omnipresent source of the harmony and balance of nature.