Shaykh al-Islām Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah sanctify his soul—said:

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Some theologians, philosophers, and Sufis have discussed how contingent and originated beings depend for their existence on the Necessary, Eternal Being. This meaning is true, for Allah is the Lord and Sovereign of everything. However, they cite as evidence His words:

“Everything will perish except His Face.”

They say that the verse means that every contingent being, considered in itself, is perishing, or is sheer nonexistence and pure negation, and that it has existence only from its Lord. Thus, considered in itself, it is perishing, but it exists through the Face of its Lord—that is, its existence is from Him.

Some of them may then proceed from this interpretation to the doctrine of the Jahmiyyah who espouse union and indwelling. Such a person says that this Face is the existence of created beings, and that Allah’s Face is His existence. His existence would therefore be the existence of created beings, with no distinction drawn between necessary existence and contingent existence—as maintained by Ibn ‘Arabī, Ibn Sab‘īn, and others like them.

This is a necessary consequence for anyone who regards His existence as absolute existence, without a reality peculiar to Him that distinguishes Him from anything else, whether he regards it as absolute existence conditioned by absoluteness—as Ibn Sīnā and philosophers like him claim—or as absolute existence without any condition—as the proponents of union maintain.