Darʾ Taʿâroud al-ʿAql wa-n-Naql - Ibn Taimiya - (5/155)

The same applies to priority: a condition need not be prior to what is conditioned upon it. By contrast, the priority of what necessitates over what is necessitated, of the agent over what it produces, and of the cause over its effect is beyond doubt for the great majority of rational people.

Al-Rāzī’s counterargument against them, invoking the contingent essence that receives its existence—if the two are held to be distinct—is sound. But his opponent’s distinction, namely that the essence of the Necessary Being produces its existence, is mistaken. If the essence of the Necessary Being is held to be distinct from its existence, it does not produce that existence; rather, it too receives its existence, just as a contingent being does. Yet its existence remains necessary despite this receptivity.

Both the recipient and what it receives are necessary in themselves, and their nonexistence is impossible, unlike a contingent being. This is what those who affirm the divine attributes say concerning the essence and the attributes. It is also what the philosophers say concerning contingent beings, such as the celestial sphere, whose essence and existence they claim are eternal.

For Ibn Sīnā and his followers say that its essence is the locus of its existence, and that both are eternal and cannot cease to exist, although its existence is through another. If this is intelligible in the case of what is necessary through another, it is all the more so in the case of what is necessary in itself—if its self is said to be the locus of its existence, and both its essence and its existence are necessary, such that neither can be negated.

This also makes clear the answer to the argument formulated by al-Āmidī. For his statement, “If that which is denoted by ‘Necessary Being’ cannot be fully realized in each of the two things except through that which makes it particular and distinct, then that which is denoted by ‘Necessary Being’ must depend upon something outside the concept conveyed by its name, and thus will not be necessary in itself,”

وكذلك التقدم، فإن تقدم الشرط على المشروط غير واجب، وأما تقدم الموجب على الموجب، والفاعل على المفعول، والعلة على المعلول، فلا ريب فيه عند جماهير العقلاء. ومعارضة الرازي لهم بالماهية الممكنة القابلة لوجودها، إذا قيل بتعددهما معارضة صحيحة وأما فرق المعارض له بأن الماهية في الواجب فاعلة للوجود فغلط فإن ماهية الواجب إذا قيل بمغايرتها لوجوده، ليست فاعلة لوجوده بل هي أيضاً قابلة لوجوده كالممكن لكن وجوده واجب مع هذا القبول. والقابل والمقبول كلاهما واجب بنفسه يمتنع عدمه، بخلاف الممكن، كما تقوله الصفاتية في الذات والصفات، وكما تقوله الفلاسفة فيما يدعون قدم ذاته ووجوده من الممكنات كالفلك، فإن ابن سينا وأتباعه يقولون: إن ماهيته محل لوجوده، وكلاهما قديم يمتنع عدمه، لكن وجوده بغيره، فإذا عقل هذا في الواجب بغيره، ففي الواجب بنفسه أولى إذا قيل إن نفسه محل لوجوده، وكلاهما واجب بماهيته ووجوده، يمتنع نفي واحد منهما. وبهذا يظهر الجواب عن النظم الذي حرره الآمدي فإن قوله إذا لم يتم تحقق مسمى واجب الوجود في كل من الشيئين إلا بما به التخصيص والامتياز وجب افتقار مسمى واجب الوجود إلى أمر خارج عن المفهوم من اسمه، فلا يكون واجباً بذاته.