Did Adam argue from destiny against Moses to excuse his sin?

In the Book of Destiny of Majmu' al-Fatawa there is a section by Ibn Taymiyya on the Prophet ﷺ's words "So Adam prevailed over Moses" when Adam argued from destiny against him, in which he holds that this concerned calamities, not sins. ¹ He gives the hadith from the two Sahihs on the authority of Abu Hurayra (may God be pleased with him): Adam and Moses argued, and Moses said: you are the father of mankind whom God created with His hand, into whom He breathed of His spirit and before whom He made His angels prostrate – why did you bring us and yourself out of the Garden? Adam said: you are Moses to whom God spoke and for whom He wrote the Torah – how long before I was created do you find written in it the report of my disobedience (Ta Ha 121)? He said: forty years. And so Adam prevailed over Moses. He adds that it is also narrated through Umar ibn al-Khattab (may God be pleased with him) with a good chain. ¹

Ibn Taymiyya says that many people supposed Adam argued from prior destiny to deny blame for his sin, and because of this supposition split into three parties: ¹

• One party rejected the hadith as false, such as Abu Ali al-Jubba'i and others, since it is known of necessity that making destiny an excuse for the sinner contradicts what the messengers brought; the editors identify al-Jubba'i in a note as one of the imams of the Mu'tazila, born in 235 and died in 303 AH. ^{1 2}
• One party interpreted it in ways Ibn Taymiyya holds plainly unsound: that Adam prevailed because he was Moses' father and a son does not blame his father; or because the sin was under one law and the blame under another; or because the blame came after repentance; or because this is a matter in which this world and the next differ. ²
• One party made it their mainstay for dropping blame from those who oppose the command of God and His Messenger, but could not apply this consistently in their daily lives, so some used it for their own desires and not for those of others; of such people it is said, "In obedience you are a Qadari, in disobedience a Jabri." Some of them restrict it to "the people of the reality" who have witnessed the unity of lordship and been annihilated from all but God; Ibn Taymiyya attributes this to many later Sufis claiming the reality and to some people of knowledge. ²

Ibn Taymiyya quotes Abu al-Muzaffar al-Sam'ani: the debate was permissible for Adam and Moses only because they were two great prophets singled out for knowledge of realities and permitted to uncover secrets, which is not the way of creatures commanded to stop at the limits set for them; "So Adam prevailed" does not cancel obedience or drop a duty, but means giving one of two matters preference and putting the decree above the immediate cause; Adam could not have remained in the Garden because of the prior decree that he would leave it, and with this he prevailed over Moses. ^{2 3} The editors identify al-Sam'ani in a note as Mansur ibn Muhammad al-Marwazi, mufti of Khurasan, born in Merv in 426 and died there in 489 AH. ²

Ibn Taymiyya reports that Shaykh Abd al-Qadir used to say that many men, on reaching the decree and destiny, held back, while he "contended with the decrees of the Real by the Real for the Real"; that he exalted command and prohibition and forbade arguing from destiny, as did his shaykh Hammad al-Dabbas. ³ He places in this category the claim that al-Khidr was free of blame because he witnessed the reality of destiny, and the doctrine of the people of union who hold the unity of existence, naming among them al-Tilimsani, Ibn Arabi, al-Qunawi, Ibn Sab'in and Ibn al-Farid. ³

He holds that God commanded patience with calamities and seeking forgiveness for faults, citing Ghafir 55, which joins the command to be patient with the command to seek forgiveness. ¹ He says that in calamities brought about by God's decree in which no sinner remains to be punished there is nothing but patience and submission to destiny, and that the story of Adam and Moses is of this kind: Moses blamed him for what had befallen him and the offspring, Adam had repented of the sin and been forgiven, and the calamity was decreed; so Adam prevailed over Moses. ⁴ He extends this to one harmed by the act of people who sinned and then repented – an unbeliever who kills a Muslim and then becomes Muslim, or one who held an innovation by interpretation and then repented – which he counts among the calamities from heaven for which no retaliation is sought. ⁴

The Mu'tazili and Sufi views here come from Ibn Taymiyya's report, not from their own books; the commentaries on the hadith by the commentators on the two Sahihs have not yet been added.