is providence. This is a summary whose details you may find your way to.”

This account is even more far-fetched than the view that the world was assigned one time rather than another, and one attribute rather than another, solely because eternal knowledge related to it in that particular way. Various speculative theologians, including the Ashʿarīs and others, have maintained this, as will be explained. Thus, those theologians made knowledge the determining factor in what was willed, whereas these philosophers made knowledge the determining factor in what, according to them, was not willed.

This can be addressed from several angles.

First:

We may say: We do not concede that this provides a way out, or that it is actual or even possible. How, then, can we know that there is no other way out? They have offered no argument for this, nor can they establish any argument for it whatsoever.

Second:

We may say: Knowledge always follows its object and corresponds to it. It may also be a cause of that object’s existence, as with knowledge of what the knower himself does—for example, the Lord Most High’s knowledge of the universal order, which he mentioned. Alternatively, it may not be a cause, as with knowledge of things that neither result from a person’s actions nor arise through his intention. Some people—among the philosophers and their like—regard knowledge without qualification as an active attribute, or make it alone that which necessitates the existence of its object. This is an error, as we shall explain. Others—among the speculative theologians and others—regard it as invariably an attribute