9. Human Freedom

9. Human Freedom

Most of our theologians thought the doctrine of human freedom could not be reconciled with the fore-knowledge of God. They looked upon belief in freedom as veiled atheism. So thought Mahmud Shabistri. But  the author of Gulshan-i-Raz made the tacit assumption of an absolute and independent Time like Newton. He did not see that if his view of Time were true, then the freedom of God would also disappear. Shabistri’s argument will not hold to-day; for God can be conceived as creating Time from moment to moment. If the Universe is an open one, there is no preexisting future, and God does not know the future because there is nothing to know.