It is only the ignorant among the philosophizers and others of their kind who find it difficult to conceive of the world’s coming into being and undergoing change, because they have not esteemed Allah as He deserves. Everything they witnessed of the world’s greatness and magnitude should have guided them to the greatness of its Originator. Yet when those among them who went astray did so, they did not affirm for its Creator and Originator an absolute existence that applies only to nonexistence. Even if they affirm certain universal characteristics for Him, these still do not prevent that existence from corresponding only to nonexistence. Thus, these eternalists who negate the divine attributes are analogous to those affirmers of the attributes who do not affirm the reality of an Essence distinct from the world, for their position ultimately amounts to that of those who negate the attributes as well.

That being so, consider someone among them who commits himself to denying the Maker and says:

“I maintain that the world is eternal and necessarily existent in itself, so as not to incur the objection you have mentioned concerning its proceeding from an eternal agent.”

This resembles what some affirmers of the attributes may say when arguments leave them no room to manoeuvre concerning the Throne, the Quran, the vision of Allah, and other matters: “We adopt the Muʿtazilite position of negating the attributes altogether.”

The response to this eternalist is: if you consider it rationally possible for these celestial spheres to exist eternally, without beginning, and necessarily—or to have come into being by themselves—then, since they are not brought about by another, they must either be eternal in themselves or have come into being by themselves. If, then, you allow this without time or place, and not from matter