a work cannot possibly come into being except through a maker, just as reason cannot conceive of a maker who makes nothing or a writer who writes nothing. Thus, a work depends upon its maker just as a maker, in being a maker, depends upon the existence of his work.”

He said:

“This is the essential point on which this proof rests.”

[Ibn Taymiyyah’s Commentary]

I say:

The explanation is that when one speaks of a work or an act, the expression implies a maker or an agent, just as speaking of an agent or a maker implies an act or a work. This is because the verbal noun necessarily implies an agent, just as the agent necessarily implies the action denoted by the verbal noun. Just as reason knows that an agent without an act is impossible, it also knows that an act without an agent is impossible.

Al-Qādī Abū Bakr also presented this argument on the premise that knowledge of the dependence of what comes into being upon an originator is not self-evident. He claimed that al-Asharī held this view, as in his statement quoted earlier:

“Neither we nor the author of the book claim that knowledge of the impossibility of a work coming into being without a maker is something apprehended self-evidently.”

Yet it is clear that al-Asharī’s words contain nothing of the sort. He did not state that knowledge of a work’s dependence upon a maker is established by explaining that a work necessarily implies a maker just as a maker necessarily implies a work. Nor did he state that this entails precedence and posteriority, thus requiring one who brings forward and one who delays.