necessary through another.

As for whether that which is necessary through another is contingent with respect to its own essence, this is open to question. Hence this method is flawed when pursued in this manner. His own approach, however, is necessarily flawed, because he did not initially divide existents into the genuinely contingent and the necessary, which is the natural division of existents.”

He said:

“Then Abū Hāmid said, replying to the philosophers’ assertion that a body is not a necessary existent in itself because it has parts that are its cause:

‘If it is said: It cannot be denied that a body has parts, that the whole subsists only through its parts, and that the parts are prior in essence to the whole.

We reply: Let that be so. The whole is constituted by the parts and their combination, but neither the parts nor their combination has a cause. Rather, they have existed eternally in this state, without an efficient cause. They can refute this only by invoking their earlier claim that multiplicity must be denied of the first existent. We have already refuted this claim of theirs, and they have no other recourse.’”

He said:

“It is thus clear that whoever does not believe that bodies have a beginning cannot arrive