Thus, if it is said:

“Action as a kind is inseparable from Him; only its individual instances come into being,”

then it is all the more appropriate to say:

“Knowledge as a kind is inseparable from Him.”

Indeed, even if it is said:

“Creation as a kind has a beginning,”

it is still possible to say:

“Knowledge itself is inseparable from Him, whether or not something particular is said to come into being when the objects of knowledge come into existence.”

That is further removed from incompatibility with necessary existence than His coming to produce something He had not previously produced.

[The Tenth Argument]

His statement:

“For without external things, it would not exist at all.”

The response is: If the pronoun “it” refers to Allah, then the statement means: “Were it not for those external things, He would not exist.” Supposing the absence of a necessary consequence entails the absence of that which necessitates it; but the absence of that necessary consequence is impossible. They themselves say that if the effect ceased to exist, the cause would cease to exist. There is therefore nothing objectionable in this.

If the pronoun refers to knowledge—meaning, “Without the object of knowledge, there would be no knowledge”—there is even less reason to regard this as impossible.

The confusion arises only because the statement, “Without external things, it would not exist,” admits of two meanings:

The first is that those things are the agent that brings it into being, or part of that agent, or