And whatever He does not will does not come to be, for nothing can exist without Allah’s will, exalted is He, even though Allah has the power to bring it into being and it is contingent in itself—that is, Allah could create it; if He willed, He would create it.

Much of the disagreement in this matter concerns terminology.

By saying that something is contingent considered in itself, they do not mean that its nonexistence follows whenever its agent is supposed not to exist. Ibn Sīnā and his followers, however, who say that the celestial sphere is eternal and beginningless yet nevertheless contingent, do mean this.

Most rational thinkers, by contrast, mean that it does not exist of itself and that, considered in itself, it may either exist or not exist. Whatever is like this is originated in time.

There is no doubt that, despite this, it is necessary through another when it exists, not before it exists. Its nonexistence while it exists is impossible because its agent’s nonexistence is impossible. Yet its nonexistence is not absolutely impossible if it was nonexistent and then came into being. Thus its nonexistence while it exists is an impossibility entailed by another impossibility.

What most rational thinkers—Ibn Rushd and others—reject in the position of Ibn Sīnā and those later thinkers who agreed with him is their claim that something contingent, admitting both existence and nonexistence, may be eternal and beginningless, necessary through another. This is what the majority reject. Ibn Rushd has stated that it conflicts with the position of Aristotle and the earlier philosophers.

For this reason