Protology and Eschatology in the Islamic Exegesis

Abi Talib’s exegesis of Q 2:30 contains this remark on the creation of Adam: “The skin of the earth had both good and bad in it, which accounts for why some people are good and some are bad.”   It is a claim further adverted to by other interpreters exegeting other passages. Remarking on a series of passages about God’s covenant with Adam’s descendants, for instance, Abu al-Darda describes God striking Adam on the back with his right and left hands to produce to sets of descendants, identifying some with “To Paradise” and some as “To the Fire.”  

This pair of citations attempts to grapple with the problems of human evil and of the damnation of some and salvation of others. These texts on the creation of Adam ground both issues in protology: both human evil and the variant eternal destinations of human beings are known, and apparently determined, at the moment of creation.  To Christian eyes, it is a troubling theological maneuver, for it apparently leaves no space to human freedom either in the origin of human evil or the basis of eternal salvation or damnation.  

Abi Talib’s claim that the goodness or wickedness of human beings has its origin solely in the material with which they were created (“The skin of the earth had both good and bad in it”) seems particularly perilous. While it absolves God of the responsibility for creating bad human beings, it does so by effectively claiming that God could not have created humanity any differently; the moral deficiencies of human beings derive from deficient material. This apparently entails a level of dependence by God upon the matter out of which he creates, with a consequent challenge to the extent of divine power.  Are we to assume that God lacked the capacity to create human beings as good, but was limited only by bad material? Talib’s claim avoids attributing to God the responsibility for human evil only at the cost of raising more serious questions about divine omnipotence. In this respect, it seems only to complicate the issue without resolving it.