The Justice of God

Foundations, Part 5

On one of the major theological positions in Islamic history, if God punished the innocent and rewarded the guilty, that would still, by definition, be justice.

This session sets three positions on divine justice against each other. The Ash'arite school holds that God is not bound by any external standard of justice at all — whatever He does is just simply because He is the one doing it. The Mu'tazilite school argued the opposite: that justice is rationally knowable, and that God cannot act unjustly because that would contradict reason. The session also traces why the Mu'tazilite school became effectively defunct within a few centuries, after its doctrines were forced on the population as state theology during the era of Imam al-Rida, and the backlash that followed.

Against both, the session sets out the Shia position: that justice is essential to God's very nature — not an external rule imposed on Him, and not merely rational — and that this belief carries an obligation. If God's justice must be reflected in society, injustice within a society must be resisted.

If God's justice is not simply "whatever He decides", what does that put on us?

What the evening covers

The word itself. 'Adl (justice, balance) against its opposite, dhulm (oppression) — the Arabic roots behind the whole discussion.
Three schools, three verdicts. Whether God's justice is arbitrary, rational, or essential to His nature.
Why the Mu'tazilite school disappeared. Its rise as enforced state doctrine, and its collapse within a few centuries.
Justice as an obligation, not a belief. The Qur'anic command to reconcile two warring groups of believers "with justice".
Moral evil and natural evil. The two shapes of the problem of evil, and how free will resolves the tension without denying God's power.