is originated, while also maintaining that He is everywhere, or that, despite this, He is neither separate from the world nor in contact with it, or that He is neither inside the world nor outside it.

As for the Jahmiyyah among the philosophers and Sabians, they further maintain that the world, too, is eternal alongside Him, concurrent with Him in existence as an effect is concurrent with its complete cause, or as something generated is concurrent with that which generates it—as sound is generated by motion and rays by the sun. Yet they say that the Creator, Most High, takes precedence over it in supremacy, in essence or nature, and in nobility. They may also say that the world is originated, meaning that it depends upon the Maker. On examination, however, they do not affirm any real precedence for Him, just as neither they nor the Jahmiyyah among the speculative theologians affirm that He is truly above the world or separate from it in any intelligible sense.

These thinkers hold that precedence and posteriority are of five kinds. The first is causal precedence, such as the precedence of a lamp over its light or of the sun over its rays. Reason apprehends that the lamp’s existence precedes its light, even though neither can lag behind the other in time.