the soul, matter, and form. They agree that sensible bodies are composed of matter and form, both of which are intelligible substances. Likewise, they say that particular sensible entities contain natural, intelligible universals that are parts of them.

If these thinkers affirm intelligible substances within and alongside sensible substances, although the senses cannot apprehend them in any way, and regard one as inhering in the other and the other as its locus, they cannot then deny that necessary existence either inheres in these sensible things or serves as their locus.

This is the conclusion reached by their most rigorous thinkers, such as Ibn Sabʿīn and others like him. They regard necessary existence in relation to contingent existence as matter in relation to form, or form in relation to matter, or something similar. They make necessary existence a part of contingent existence, just as the universal is a part of the particular. Indeed, Ibn Rushd the grandson and others like him regard necessary existence as a condition for the existence of contingent things, without which their existence cannot be fully realized. Yet the existence of a condition may itself depend upon the existence of that which it conditions, so that each is a condition for the existence of the other.

[Ibn ʿArabī’s discussion in Fusūs al-Hikam of the relationship between necessary and contingent existence]

This is what their position truly amounts to: they make necessary and contingent existence mutually dependent, each conditioned by the other, like matter and form.

Ibn ʿArabī thus holds that the entities of contingent things are established in nonexistence, and that necessary existence flows forth upon them. Its existence can therefore be realized only through them, while their essences can be realized only through it. He built his position upon two false principles.