except through it, and to suffer harm in the very path by which he claims to know his Lord, encountering a difficulty there that he cannot resolve—even though he is one of the foremost leaders of the schools of speculative theology and philosophy. Indeed, one might even say that none among them in his time equalled him.

The purpose here is to quote his formulation of the difficulty he raised:

“What prevents the aggregate from being contingent in existence, with its existence determined by the existence of its individual members, and the existence of each member determined by another, without end?”

[Response to al-Āmidī]

He may be answered as follows:

As for things to which necessity, contingency, impossibility, or some other attribute applies: if there is nothing beyond that attribute’s applying to them all, with no additional existent reality beyond the individual members, then their aggregate is nothing over and above its members. If, however, there is a particular union, such as a specific composition, then that composition and particular union are additional to the individual members. Accordingly, merely supposing contingent things that all share contingency does not imply that their sharing this attribute constitutes anything over and above the individual members, just as ten, considered simply as a number, is nothing over and above its ten individual units.

Nevertheless, we shall set out the possible alternatives that may come to mind, so that the proof is comprehensive. We therefore say: if someone says, concerning contingent effects such as these: