Thus, if that is so, he established it just as he established its existence, by stating that there must be a relation between it and the sensible world.

His opponents among the philosophers could say to him:

“Nothing can exist there, whether a body or something else. A body cannot exist there for the reason he mentioned; nor can anything else, because it would be possible to point to it as being there, and whatever can be pointed to is a body.”

This is like what the Muʿtazila say to the Kullābiyya, the early Ashʿarīs, and those scholars of hadith who agree with them, such as the Tamīmīs and others like them among their followers. Ibn Rushd therefore answers them as the Kullābiyya answer the Muʿtazila: the existence of a being that is neither beyond the bodies of the world nor within them is either possible or impossible. If it is impossible, their position is invalid. If it is possible, then the existence of a being beyond the bodies of the world that is not a body is all the more possible. For if we present to reason the existence of a self-subsisting being that is neither within the world nor outside it and cannot be pointed to, and then present to it the existence of a being that can be pointed to above the world but is not a body, reason’s rejection of the former would be