As for the fact that a thing is originated and contingent—capable of both existence and non-existence—this in itself is proof of its poverty and necessarily entails that poverty. Whatever is originated was once nonexistent, and what was nonexistent does not exist through itself but through another. Likewise, whatever admits both being and non-being does not, by its own essence, possess existence. The same applies when we describe something as “made,” “created,” and the like: such terms all point to its dependence. In reality the poverty of things and their need of the Creator arise from their very essence. We only say “by its essence” in deference to established modes of expression; in truth they have no essence independent of Him that could be characterized as poor or rich. He alone brings their very ‘is-ness’ into being; they have no actuality apart from His creative act, nor do their realities endure save through His continual originating of them. There is absolutely no further cause for this, just as His necessary existence has no cause and His freedom from all need has no cause.

Thus, when we say that He “exists by Himself,” or is “necessary in Himself,” or “self-sufficient in Himself,” we do not mean that some distinct “self” made Him exist, rendered Him necessary, or bestowed self-sufficiency upon Him. Rather, the very necessary, self-sufficient existence is identical with His essence; there is no agent and patient here, no cause and effect. Those who slip into error are the ones who imagine that His existence is something added to His reality—such as Abū Hāshim, a group of the mutakallimūn, certain jurists of the four schools and others, as well as al-Rāzī in one of his two opinions. They treat necessary existence as an effect of an essence already described by attributes, just as they—and the philosophers—hold that a contingent essence merely receives existence and is then qualified by it, taking existence to be an attribute superadded to the existing essence.

A number of dialectical theologians counted among the Sunnites have followed them in this; the same idea appears in the writings of many of them, such as Abū ʾl-Ḥasan ibn al-Zāghūnī and others, and whoever speaks in this manner—