[Section]

The root of the error of these two groups is their denial of Allah’s attributes and acts subsisting in His essence.

Having denied these, they then sought to establish that contingent beings proceed from Him, despite witnessing their coming into existence. Nothing remained that could serve as the determining factor for the existence of contingent beings—except for those among them observed to come into existence—nor for anything else.

The philosophers therefore confront these speculative theologians with arguments exposing the inconsistency of their position. The theologians answer them in ways that entail determination without a determining factor, such as attributing determination to power or to an eternal will that has no particular connection with one time rather than another.

The philosophers say to them:

“Attributing specification and determination to a determining factor for which there is no distinction between one time and another, or between one effect and another, is like attributing specification and determination to the preponderance of an essence devoid of attributes.”

Yet every argument the philosophers advance applies equally to their own position, with consequences even more untenable. Their position is more contradictory than that of these speculative theologians. There is no untenable consequence that follows from the theologians’ position without an equivalent or worse consequence following from that of the philosophers.

For they attribute the existence of diverse contingent beings—such as the celestial spheres, the elements, and what they call intellects and souls—together with the diverse temporal events that successively occur in them, to a bare, simple essence possessing neither attributes nor acts.

They say:

“It has always been, and will always remain, devoid of attributes and acts. Nevertheless, diverse things and diverse, successive, temporally originated beings continually proceed from it.”