and their Sovereign Lord; that whatever God wills comes to be and whatever He does not will can never occur; and that there is no might and no power save through Him. They know that the causes are themselves created by God through His will and power and that they remain forever dependent upon Him. Hence they do not describe them as necessary effects that emanate from Him, as the philosophers maintain, nor as entities that can dispense with Him once they have been brought into existence, as some scholastic theologians claim. Rather, everything other than God Most High is in ceaseless need of Him: nothing comes into being or endures save by His eternal will. Accordingly, whenever an event takes place through causes, God is the Creator of the event and of its causes alike.

They further state that none of the causes He has created enjoys independent efficacy in any matter whatsoever. Each one must be aided and joined by additional causes, and each in turn is confronted by oppositions and impediments that counteract or repel it. The ray that issues from the sun and the burning produced by fire illustrate this: with the sun a receptive surface is required to reflect the ray, yet the ray can be blocked by an intervening barrier such as a cloud, a roof, or any other obstacle.

For this reason, the doctrines of the theologians among the various religious communities—the Muʿtazilīs, the Shiʿites, the Karrāmīs, the Ashʿarīs, and the like—are more acceptable than the views of the philosophers, naturalists, astrologers, and their ilk. The latter do indeed observe certain causes, the natures and forces God has placed within bodies, and the effects exerted by the sun, the moon, and other celestial bodies upon this world; yet they nevertheless attribute events to a single cause, treating the occurrence of phenomena—whether in bodies or otherwise—as the sole work of "nature."