That concerning which God’s servant appoints his Lord
as agent accords with the revelation.
O seeker of what he does not know is his,
take none but the Deity as agent.
Trust is the heart’s reliance upon God, exalted is He, without disturbance when the causes established within the cosmos, upon which souls customarily rest, are absent. If he is disturbed, he is not trusting.
It is an attribute of believers. What, then, do you think of the learned among believers? Yet trust belongs to the learned person only insofar as he believes, as God has restricted it, not without purpose. Were it an attribute of the learned and required by reflective knowledge, He would not have restricted it to faith. No nonbeliever shares in trust, whatever the revealed Law may be.
The reason is that nothing is rationally obligatory upon God, exalted is He, except what He makes obligatory upon Himself. This is accepted through faith rather than through knowledge, for He is “Doer of whatever He wills” [Hud 11:107].
When He guarantees what He guarantees and reports that He will do one of the two possible things, we rely upon Him in that specific matter and affirm His truthfulness. His truthfulness is known through proof and reflective knowledge. Our stillness and lack of disturbance when causes are absent arise only from faith in His guarantee. Had we remained with knowledge, we would be disturbed. When the knower is still, it is insofar as he believes,[16] and he believes insofar as he knows the guarantor’s truthfulness.
(The Direction of Agency and the Matter Delegated)
To establish agency: who merits it—God or the cosmos, or does God have a share and the cosmos a share? Know that agency is valid only
Notes
[16]
(The author distinguishes knowledge of an act’s possibility from faith in the truth of the specific promise. He assigns stillness concerning the guarantee to faith.)
Translator’s note TN4110-1: Tawakkul is trust; tawkil is appointing an agent and wakil is agent. The author grounds trust in faith in the specific divine guarantee, while reflective knowledge establishes the guarantor’s truthfulness without itself fixing which possible act He will perform.
