and that your refutation can be carried through only by grounding it in the denial of multiplicity within this question and the ones that follow. Yet how can the very point at issue be built upon something that is itself merely a derivative of that point? The section to which he alludes is where he writes: “The fifth question is to show their inability to furnish a proof that God is one and that it is impossible to posit two Necessary Existents, each of which is without cause.”

They advance two lines of argument for this claim.

First line: They say, “If the Necessary Existent were two, the species ‘necessity of existence’ would be predicated of each. Now, of anything described as a Necessary Existent there are only two possibilities: either its necessity of existence belongs to it by virtue of its very essence, in which case it is inconceivable for that necessity to belong to something else; or its necessity of existence is due to a cause, in which case the essence of the putative Necessary Existent would itself be an effect, for some cause would have conferred necessity of existence upon it. Yet by ‘Necessary Existent’ we mean precisely that whose existence bears no dependence on any cause whatsoever. They illustrate this by saying that the species ‘human being’ is predicated of both Zayd and ʿAmr, but Zayd is not a human being by his essence—for if he were essentially human, ʿAmr could not also be human. Rather, a cause makes Zayd human, and that same cause makes ʿAmr human. Hence humanity obtains through the plurality of the substrata that bear it, and its attachment to matter is itself an effect, not something intrinsic to the essence of humanity. Likewise, if the necessity of existence belongs to the Necessary Existent by virtue of its essence, it can belong to him alone; if it arises from a cause, then he too is an effect and not truly necessary. From this, they conclude, the Necessary Existent must be one.”

Abū Ḥāmid answered: “Your statement, ‘The genus of necessary existence pertains to the Necessary Existent either essentially or by a cause,’ is a mistaken division from the outset; for we have shown that the phrase ‘necessity of existence’ is ambiguous unless one intends by it the negation of causal dependence. If that is what is meant, then let that wording be employed, and we would say: it is not impossible—”