through acts subsisting in Himself and that Allah created the heavens and the earth and all that is between them in six days, as well as by those who maintain the eternity of the world. They said:

“What you have said is self-evidently false. To admit this possibility entails that events can arise without a cause and that one alternative can prevail without a determining factor. This closes the door to establishing the Creator’s existence.”

Then these affirmers of divine decree used this argument against those who deny divine decree, saying:

“For the servant’s action to come into being after not existing, there must be an originating and fully determining cause other than the servant, since whatever proceeds from the servant is itself also brought into being. When that originating and fully determining cause exists, the servant’s action must necessarily exist.”

What they have said is true and constitutes a decisive argument against the Qadariyyah and the Muʿtazilah. Yet they undermined it and contradicted themselves concerning the acts of the Lord, blessed and exalted is He. There they claimed that self-evident reason distinguishes between the action of an agent possessed of power and the operation of a cause that necessitates its effect by its very essence. If this distinction is valid, their argument against the Muʿtazilah fails, and the Qadariyyah’s position has not been refuted. If it is invalid, their account of Allah’s bringing the world into being and creating it is false. And this account is indeed false.

For the principle that the existence of a contingent thing cannot prevail over its nonexistence without a fully determining factor is known through the innate disposition as a self-evident necessity and cannot be challenged. It is universal, admitting no exceptions. The distinction mentioned is therefore invalid. This invalidates their claim that the creation of the world is the world itself, and that it came into being after not existing without any newly arising cause.

Whoever says that the servant’s power and the other causes through which Allah Most High has created things are not causes, or that their existence is no different from their nonexistence, and that there is nothing beyond a mere conjunction