Aristotle and his followers called “the Lord” an intellect and a substance. According to them, He knows nothing other than Himself, wills nothing, and does nothing. They call Him “the Principle” and “the First Cause,” because, in their view, the celestial sphere moves in order to resemble Him, or to resemble the intellect. Thus, according to them, the celestial sphere needs the First Cause only insofar as it seeks to resemble it, just as someone following an imam in prayer emulates him, or a pupil emulates his teacher.

He may also say that He moves the sphere as the beloved moves his lover. They do not hold that He has brought anything into existence or done anything. Nor did they call Him the Necessary Existent, or divide existence into necessary and contingent while regarding the contingent as something eternal and beginningless, like the celestial sphere in their view. Rather, this was the work of Ibn Sīnā and his followers. In this, they opposed their predecessors and all rational people; they also contradicted themselves. For they explicitly affirmed what their predecessors and all other rational people had affirmed: that what is contingent—capable of existing or not existing—must have come into being after not existing. As for that which is beginningless, which has always existed and will always exist, they and all other rational people consider it impossible for it to be contingent, admitting either existence or nonexistence. Rather, whatever admits existence and nonexistence must have come into being. This is among the arguments used to establish that everything other than Allah has come into being, preceded by nonexistence, existing after it did not exist, as has been explained at length in its proper place.

Yet Ibn Sīnā and his followers contradicted themselves, stating elsewhere that existence is divided into necessary and contingent, and that a contingent being may be eternal and beginningless, having always existed and continuing forever, such that it is impossible