present in the mind and that which is. If this does not preclude what reason knows innately—that His existence must either be concurrent with the world or precede it—then likewise, what he mentions concerning spatial location does not preclude what reason knows innately: that His existence must either be within the world, sharing its spatial location, or outside it, separate from it.

Just as no existent can be conceived except as either eternal or originated, none can be conceived except as either subsisting in itself or subsisting in another. Just as the eternal is divided into the absolutely eternal, whose nonexistence is impossible, and the eternal in a qualified sense, which is preceded by nonexistence or whose nonexistence is possible, so too the self-subsistent is divided into that which is absolutely necessary—whose nonexistence is impossible and which has no need of anything else whatsoever—and that which is self-subsistent in a qualified sense, which needs something else and subsists at one time but ceases to exist at another.

Just as a created thing is eternal in a qualified sense when it precedes something else, the eternal Creator has all the more reason to precede everything else and to be the First, before whom there is nothing, existing before all things. Likewise, if a created thing that subsists in itself—though only in a qualified sense because it needs something else—is separate from other things, then the Creator of the world, who subsists in Himself absolutely, has all the more reason to be separate from everything else and to be the Manifest, above whom there is nothing.

The Jahmiyyah among the speculative theologians say that He is eternal and that the world