evil.

Others say: ‘Five things are necessary in themselves: the Creator, the soul, prime matter, time, and the void.’”

He said:

“The falsity of these and similar views becomes apparent only through the aforementioned arguments demonstrating that there cannot be more than one necessarily existent being.”

[Ibn Taymiyyah’s commentary]

I say:

The two positions have thus become conflated in his account, just as they were in the other author’s. For whoever says that bodies—or prime matter, which is the substratum of corporeality—are necessary in themselves, while their attributes are contingent, belongs to the same category as those who affirm five necessary things. Both maintain that the Creator brought about composition and design. This differs from the position of those who affirm two gods, good and evil, since they maintain that both are agents. These views do not include the position of those who ascribe necessary existence to several things and regard everything else as their effects, as do those among the Magians who affirm the two principles: light and darkness.

Those who maintain that the soul is eternal, however, say that it loved prime matter and could only be freed from it through the origination of the world. Those who maintain that matter alone is eternal do not say this.

Those who maintain the eternity of prime matter, certain bodies, or the like are not obliged to say that these are necessarily existent in themselves. Rather, they may say that they are brought into being as effects of the One who is necessary in Himself. This is the well-known position of the ancient philosophers.

In his Commentary on the Pointers, al-Rāzī stated that these thinkers hold that the Creator is necessary in Himself, while the soul and other things are His effects. Here, however, he stated