For Allah Most High is the being that exists necessarily through Himself, the Creator of everything besides Him. As for the collective configuration, if it is supposed to have actual existence, it too owes its existence to Him, glorified and exalted is He.

As for an aggregate in which every member depends upon someone to bring it into existence, and none exists through itself, its agent cannot be one of its members, since that member must itself have an agent. For if it were their agent, it would not be the agent of itself and the other contingent beings, and it would follow that some of the constituent parts of the contingent beings suffice for the entire aggregate of contingent beings. If the aggregate of contingent beings cannot be their agent, then one of its members has even greater reason to be incapable of being their agent. For what the aggregate cannot accomplish, a part of it has even greater reason to be unable to accomplish; and whatever the aggregate depends upon, a part of it has even greater reason to depend upon.

This objector treated “that upon which the aggregate depends” as an ambiguous expression. Dependence may mean the dependence of something conditional upon its condition, or the dependence of something brought into existence upon its agent 0. He then proceeded to raise objections against each interpretation, and we shall answer on either assumption.

[The Fourth Argument]

One may ask: By “the totality of that upon which the aggregate depends,” do you mean that whose existence entails the existence of the aggregate, and which must exist in its entirety for the aggregate to exist, irrespective of whether it is a condition or an agent? For the totality of that upon which a thing depends is the totality encompassing everything upon which that thing depends.

Thus, everything upon which a thing depends is