Critical Appraisal of Abolhasan Ameri's Views on Predestination and Free Will

The problem of predestination and free will is one of the long-lasting and important topics which has preoccupied people's minds, and made scholars of different religions and doctorines to adopt a position toward it. The focus of the present paper is on Ameri’s perspective on this important issue. It is hypothesized that Ameri supports neither predestination nor absolute free will. He rather takes a mddile position. The main findings of this research are: to provide an answer to this research problem, Ameri first identify the point of conflict through distinguishing between the two aspects of an object, its intrinsic aspect and its non-intrinsic aspect, and between the types of actions- natural, forced, and intellectual. He believes that the two types of natural and forced actions are related to determinism, and the intellectual and desired actions are related to free wll. He further believes that it is the active power from which actions are issued, and the passive power is the power in which action are established. They are related to predestination and free will, and in the discussion of the three elements, only necessary by other than itself and possibility are related to the discussion of predestination and free will. He defends the theory of the creation of actions and provides reasons to refute predestination and delegation, and after refuting these two theories, he adopts the theory which takes the middle ground between these two theories. To prove the validity of this theory, he benefits from divine wisdom. In our evaluation of Ameri's theory we have made some reflections on predestination and free will.