The Holy War — Page 217
Proceedings—Debate 2 June 1893 217 In fact, this statement means that the causes of everything—be they good or evil—have been created by God Almighty. For example, if the ingredients with which wine is made are not available, then how could the drunkards make wine and drink it? But if you must object, then first raise it on this verse: ‘I make peace, and create evil’ Isaiah 45:7. Then, moving forward, Deputy sahib states, the summary of which is as follows: ‘The Torah has no command as such that God forced someone to go into Hell. ’ Verily, the rebuttal to this is that God hard- ened the heart of Pharaoh and you believe in this—so was the conse- quence of this hard-heartedness Hell or was Heaven his lot? Now, look at what your Lord says in Proverbs: ‘The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil’ 16:3. 1 Now, look at how this falls upon you like a confessionary judgement that the evildoers have been created for Hell because that is indeed the day of evil! Then you state that even though the Holy Quran gives teachings of free will, it teaches compulsion as well, yet these two are contradictory to each other. In reply to this I have already written that you are mixing up the objectives—wherever you feel there is a teaching of coercion, what is actually intended is a refutation of false religions and to declare that the source of every grace is God Almighty. And you state that when Satan led away the Messiah, where is there coercion in this? The reply is that verily light was made to submit to darkness; light naturally tends to stay away from darkness. Then, you state that if free will is believed in, then it is pointless to consider God Almighty to be the Cause of all causes. This is the summary of your speech, from which it appears that by rendering God Almighty totally powerless, you wish to have full and total power and freedom, whereas His Divinity rules over our powers, the capabilities of our limbs, and over the sum total knowledge of our thoughts; so how can God be rendered powerless? If this were to happen, then the whole 1. In the King James Version this reference is Proverbs 16:4. [Publisher]