its locus.” This is the position of the Najjāriyya and many of the Jahmiyya, as well as those who affirm indwelling in particular entities, such as Christians and others.

Second: even supposing that indwelling entails dependence, you have not established His independence of everything other than Himself. For the method used by al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and others like them to establish the Creator is Ibn Sīnā’s method of establishing the Necessary Existent. Yet this method does not establish a self-subsisting existent whose existence is necessary.

Even if it is said that it does establish this, it does not establish that He is distinct from the world; rather, He could be the world itself.

It was through their method that these people came to affirm the unity of existence. Their well-known method is as follows: existence is either necessary or contingent; the contingent requires a necessary existent; therefore, a necessary existent must be affirmed on either supposition.

This much indicates that there must be necessary existence. Anyone who says, “Every existent is necessary,” has satisfied what this argument requires. Likewise, anyone who says, “Necessary existence stands in relation to the contingent as form stands in relation to matter, or as existence stands in relation to fixed reality,” has satisfied what this argument requires. Indeed, they cannot establish a necessary existent distinct from the contingent unless they establish that among existing things there is something contingent, capable of existing or not existing.

They claim that a contingent thing capable of existing or not existing may be beginningless and eternal, yet they cannot furnish any proof establishing contingency in this sense.

Thus, when they needed to establish contingency, they argued that whatever comes into being must have something that brings it into being, and that things coming into being are observed.