Nor do these contradictions reach those foremost philosophers who sided with them in affirming that volitional matters subsist in His very essence and that He has always been so—such as Abū al-Barakāt, author of al-Muʿtabar, and other early and later philosophers. These thinkers consistently apply the previously stated principle that a fully operative cause necessarily entails its effect, and that the effect inseparably accompanies the fully operative cause, without distinguishing between one cause and another.

In their view, the Lord—exalted is He—is the Agent of everything besides Himself through His power and His choice. If He is called “a necessary producer by His essence,” the meaning is that His essence—characterized by power and will—produces whatever events He brings about at the very moment He brings them about. This, they hold, is correct, just as Muslims say, “Whatever Allah wills comes to be, and whatever He does not will does not come to be.” They maintain that every contingent event has a contingent cause, and that the perfection of the Lord’s agency with respect to every effect is present at the instant He produces it, as the Most High says:

“His command, when He wills a thing, is only that He says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.” (Qur’an 36:82)

On the footing of their own principle it is thus easy to expose the inconsistency of those philosophers who assert the eternity of the celestial spheres, and to invalidate both their argument and their doctrine. Others do indeed point out a contradiction in the philosophers’ position from one angle, yet they themselves lapse into contradiction from another: they rebut falsehood with falsehood and confront innovation with innovation. Still, in every case, the nearer one is to following the messengers, the sounder his statement and the closer it is to unadulterated reason and authentic transmission than that of one who is more remote from following them—for plain reason is attained only in harmony with the messengers’ words, never in opposition to them.

The aim here is to demonstrate the falsity of these philosophers’ assertion and their doctrine, and that it