formal and material causes, unless it is posited that everything possessing form and matter—and, in general, every composite—must have an efficient cause external to itself.

This requires demonstration and is not established by the argument concerning the necessarily existent, quite apart from the defects we have already noted in it. For precisely this reason, the Ashʿarīs’ argument—that everything which comes into being has something that brings it into being—does not establish an eternal first cause that is not composite. It establishes only a first cause that has not come into being.”

He said: “As for the knower and knowledge being one and the same, this is not impossible. Rather, in matters of this kind, the two concepts must ultimately coincide. For if the knower knows through knowledge, then that through which the knower knows has a still greater claim to be knowing. Whenever something acquires an attribute from something else, that attribute itself has a greater claim to possess the quality it imparts. For example, these living bodies around us are not alive in themselves, but through a life that inheres in them. Thus, the life through which something not itself living acquires life must itself be living in its own right; otherwise, the sequence would continue indefinitely. The same applies to knowledge and all other attributes.”