that He possesses knowledge. If this entails will, then my error lies in denying will.” This is the correct approach, rather than saying: “Just as you agreed with them in erroneously denying will, agree with them in erroneously denying knowledge.”

As for his statement in the second argument, “Allah’s act is a single act, namely the first effect, so He should know nothing but it,” the response is:

If it is established that His knowledge of Himself entails His knowledge of His effects, and all contingent things are His effects, then He must know them all.

As for their statement that the first thing He originated was the first intellect, their error here concerns their account of His action, not their affirmation that He must know His effects. There is no doubt that their account of how acts proceed from Him is mistaken. But an error in that account does not entail an error in the reasoning used to establish that He knows His effects.

Furthermore, even on their own principles, it does not follow that He knows only the first intellect. Rather, it follows that He knows everything. For sometimes they say that an intellect emanated from Him, and through its mediation an intellect, a soul, and a celestial sphere. Sometimes they make the second emanate from the first; sometimes they make the first a condition; and sometimes they make it the originator of the second. Some of them maintain that the celestial sphere in its entirety necessarily follows from it.

In every case, there is no doubt that complete knowledge of what entails a necessary consequence entails knowledge of that consequence. Likewise, knowledge of the complete cause entails knowledge of its effect, as explained earlier.