His oneness—and that very oneness, moreover, is particular and determinate—without there being any separation between necessity and existence, or between existence and essence and reality. This is the “unity” touted by the philosophers, that is, the Peripatetic philosophers who follow Aristotle, the path that Ibn Sīnā and those of his ilk chose to tread. Philosophers, however, are of many disparate kinds, and their mutual disagreements surpass, by far, the differences found within any other community; indeed, no religious group—even those that have altered their revelation, such as the Jews, the Christians, or the Arab idol-worshippers—disagrees among itself as much as the philosophers do.

Yet, after all this talk of unity, they contradict themselves by affirming multiplicity and plurality. They claim, at the same time, that everything they affirm ultimately reduces either to sheer negation, or to a relation, or to a compound of negation and relation. Thus they join two opposites, clash with plain reason—which has never lied—and oppose the prophets and messengers. They say: He is intellect, the intelligible, and the very act of intellection; He is lover and beloved, delighting and delighted. They say that He possesses providence, and some even say that He is willing, powerful, living, knowing, eternal, and everlasting. They declare that He is existent and necessary; some add that He is a substance—while others refrain. They describe Him as bountiful and as pure goodness.

The point here is that their sole basis, in everything they negate of Him—whether that negation be right or wrong—is the doctrine of the Necessary Existent. At times their denial is correct; at other times it is false. When they deny that there are two Necessary Beings, they fold into that statement the claim that He has no attributes and that the universe has no agent other than Him. The second claim is true—this is the monotheism of lordship—but the proof they adduce for it is invalid, and the attribute-denial they build upon it is invalid as well. Thus they mix truth with falsehood.

So, when they affirm that there exists a Necessary Existent, they have spoken the truth and have even established it correctly—though another group has contested the soundness of their method. When they say that the world does not have two creators, they again speak truth, yet they fail to establish it. But when they deny the attributes, they speak falsehood, contradict themselves, and furnish no proof. Without doubt, anything that conflicts with the necessity of