in our eagerness to engage him on the ideas this man has devised, we have allowed ourselves to discuss them with him here.”

I said:

Ibn Rushd means that what is produced by an agent cannot be eternal and beginningless. For him and for rational people generally—including Aristotle and his followers, and even Ibn Sīnā and his followers, despite their inconsistencies—the necessary is that which is eternal and beginningless, whose nonexistence in either the past or the future is impossible.

Such a being cannot be contingent, admitting of existence and nonexistence. Rather, whatever admits of both must have come into being and cannot become eternal. Hence his statement:

“What is contingent cannot be necessary.”

As for something contingent—whose existence and nonexistence are both possible, and which has come into being—becoming necessary in existence through another, there is no doubt about this. I do not think Ibn Rushd disputes it, although some speculative theologians do.

This is true even though Ibn Sīnā says it; not everything Ibn Sīnā says is false. Indeed, the position of Ahl al-Sunnah is that whatever Allah wills comes to be, so its existence is necessary, and whatever He does not will does not come to be, so its existence is impossible.

The vast majority of people agree with this, for they say:

“Nothing other than Allah possesses existence of itself.”

This is what they mean by its being contingent. They do not mean that it can fail to exist: it is necessary through another, but not necessary in itself.