motion and rest in a thing. Is it then possible, in external reality, for blackness and whiteness to coexist in a single subject, just as motion and rest coexist?”

The answer is: This is impossible. Thus, a conjunction analogous to a possible one is postulated and then judged impossible. But the actual conjunction of whiteness and blackness in a single subject is neither possible nor conceivable. It is therefore not a thing, either in external reality or in the mind, and so does not fall within His statement:

“And He has power over all things.”

The second question:

According to the majority, what does not exist is not a thing in external reality, and this is correct. They may also state without qualification that a thing is something that exists.

It may then be objected: It follows that He has power only over what exists, and that He has no power over what He has not created. This is the position of some adherents of innovation, who say that He has power only over what He wills, not over what He does not will. This view is reported from a pupil of al-Nazzām.

Those affirmationist thinkers who say that a thing is something that exists—such as al-Ash‘arī and those who agree with him among the followers of the imams, Ahmad and others, including Judge Abū Ya‘lā, Ibn al-Zāghūnī, and others—say that He has power over what exists. It may then be said: These thinkers have affirmed something that the verse does not affirm. The verse affirms His power over what exists, whereas they say that He has power over both what exists and what does not exist.

The precise account is that “thing” is a designation for both what exists in external reality and what is conceived in the mind. Thus, whatever Allah has decreed and knows will come to be is a thing in His decree, His knowledge, and the Record, even if it is not