They say, “This world is originated—in other words, it is an effect—and what they mean by its origination is simply that it is rendered necessary by the One who is necessary in Himself and therefore depends on Him.”

Yet it is self-evident that such a description can neither be called origination nor creation. Muslims and non-Muslims alike have always agreed that every created thing is originated, brought into being after previously not existing, and that every creature has indeed undergone origination. The dispute concerns only whether everything originated must be created, and whether every event must be originated; this is a well-known debate among the Muslims and is set out in detail elsewhere.

Hence the early dialecticians regarded anyone who declared the world eternal to have denied the Maker, for they could not conceive of something being both eternal and produced. Later theologians, however, when they encountered philosophers who claimed that the world is an effect yet not necessary in itself, reported this view and debated its proponents.

As for Aristotle and his followers, their writings affirm a First Cause solely in the sense of a final end: they maintain that the celestial sphere moves in order to emulate that Cause, and on that basis alone affirm its existence. They do not affirm it on the ground that the heavens are an effect produced by an active agent, as Ibn Sīnā and those who followed his approach eventually did.

Ibn Sīnā’s path combined certain principles inherited from the earlier philosophers with others borrowed from the Muʿtazilites and the like.

The messengers—may peace and blessings be upon them—never said that the Lord was, in pre-eternity, idle with respect to speech and action, unable to speak or to act by His will and power; that notion belongs only to the scholastic theologians