Previous Divine Knowledge and Human Freedom of the Will from the Point of Mulla Sadra

In the discussion of determinism and freedom of the will, the determinists have taken the incompatibility of the divine prior knowledge and human freedom of the will as a pre-text for their deterministic views. Accordingly, some others have taken for granted the human freedom of the will and rejected the divine prior knowledge, and still a third group have considered the divine knowledge as a passive and subordinated one which has no role in human acts. In this context, Mulla Sadra is one of the philosophers whose theory can clarify the issue; for he insists on accepting the divine prior knowledge and human authority simultaneously and regards the divine prior knowledge as actional knowledge which plays a creational role in relation to creatures and their acts. In many cases (mental existence, quality, the unity of reason and wisdom), he has proposed knowledge as a divine attribute. Mulla Sadra solves the difficulty of understanding the divine knowledge by employing his own fundamental principles, including the law of comprehensive truth and the uncertainty levels of existence. He regards the previous knowledge of the most high Necessary existent as concise knowledge which is no different from detailed discovery. He believes that God is not enclosed and limited in time and there is no locality aspect to God’s knowledge. Mulla Sadra, proving man’s authority through personal unity, claims that similar to the lack of contradiction between God's previous knowledge and the natural causality as the means, there is no contradiction between human free will and the requirement of divine previous knowledge. In fact, Mulla Sadra resembles divine knowledge to the divine nature saying that as the divine nature is the cause of existence which has not contradiction with the law of causality, the divine active prior knowledge like divine nature has also no contradiction with man’s authority and power. By this argument, he rejects the doubt of determinism implied by the divine prior knowledge. In this regard, the followers of Mulla Sadra's school have put emphasis on the comprehensiveness of his theory.