this ordering is absent, they are not ordered at all, but are concurrent. As for the order in which a person comes to know the attributes, this follows no fixed pattern. One may recognize knowledge and infer life from it, or recognize life and infer knowledge from it. Wherever such an ordering occurs, it is temporal: an ordering in knowing and expressing the attributes, not in the attributes themselves.

As for what they call causal priority, they may be told: this too has no reality. No single created thing is, by itself, a complete cause of anything whatsoever. Allah’s will, however, necessarily entails what He wills through it: whatever Allah wills comes to be, and whatever He does not will does not come to be. As for all other existing causal factors, none is, by itself, a complete cause of anything. Rather, it is a contributing cause, comparable to a condition which, when joined by other causal factors, forms with them an aggregate that constitutes a cause. Yet that aggregate comes into being only through Allah’s will; it never comes into being through any cause other than Allah’s will.

Thus, no created thing possesses the property of complete causality. Since no created thing is a complete cause, it is all the more impossible for it to have causal priority. Rather, it is a contributing cause, comparable to a condition. A condition need not precede what is conditioned by it: it may be concurrent with it or precede it, as explained above. If it is concurrent with it, it is not prior to it in any respect. Likewise, what they call a cause is, in reality, only a condition and a contributing cause, and it may precede it. If it is