by His very essence while at the same time not necessitating by His very essence—an outright union of two opposites. It follows, therefore, that to claim the bodies are created whereas the intellects are eternal combines mutually exclusive propositions and is thus false.

To elucidate: either it is permissible to say that He begins to act after previously not acting, or it is not. If such a beginning is deemed possible—as some theologians allow—then the origination of everything other than Him is likewise possible. If, however, it is deemed impossible, it necessarily follows that He has always been acting. In that case, if it is said that He has eternally been acting upon one thing after another, perpetual agency remains compatible with the temporal origination of all things besides Him. But if it is claimed that He has eternally been acting upon one specific entity, then no distinction remains between the intellects and anything else. Hence the assertion that the intellects are eternal while bodies are created is internally inconsistent.

This also makes clear that the proof advanced by certain theologians for the createdness of bodies—though correct—actually entails the createdness of everything other than Allah. It thereby exposes the error of their later followers who objected to their predecessors, insisting that the argument for the origination of bodies and accidents does not encompass all things apart from Allah, because, they say, the intellects and souls upheld by the Peripatetic philosophers could exist and be eternal. They further claim that the theologians produced no sound proof for negating realities beyond bodies and accidents. We have refuted these claims elsewhere.

Dialecticians have offered several ways to invalidate that objection. One approach is that of those who maintain that the knowledge that every contingent being is either a body or an accident inhering in a body is self-evident—a point affirmed by more than one leading dialectician, such as Abū al-Maʿālī and others.