for knowledge of a relation depends on conceiving of both the thing related and that to which it is related. Yet a person may be unaware of this relation or of the thing’s being evidence. Once he conceives of it, he recognizes what it indicates, provided he knows that it necessarily entails it. People know that these created things are signs and proofs of the Creator; they must therefore know Him in order to know that these proofs necessarily entail His existence. The point is that these rational methods, rooted in innate human disposition, are those presented by the Quran: reason and revelation agree, and rational reflection and transmitted revelation go hand in hand.

Those who espouse philosophy, such as Ibn Sīnā, al-Rāzī, and their followers, said:

“The way to establish His existence is to infer it from contingent beings, since a contingent being requires a necessary being.”

They said:

“Existence is either necessary or contingent, and contingent existence requires a necessary being. Thus, the existence of a necessary being follows on either supposition.”

Ibn Sīnā introduced this position, combining the statements of the speculative theologians with those of his philosophical predecessors. The speculative theologians divided existence into beginningless and originated existence, whereas he divided it into necessary and contingent existence. This was because, in his view, the celestial sphere had not come into being; nevertheless, he claimed that it was contingent. No philosopher before him had proposed this division. Indeed, the most accomplished among them recognized that it was erroneous and that he had departed from his predecessors, the majority of rational thinkers, and others.

We have explained elsewhere that beginningless existence and necessary existence mutually entail one another according to rational thinkers generally, both earlier and later. No group among them is known to have disputed this, apart from the position newly introduced by these people. We witness many things coming into existence after not having existed, and we witness their ceasing to exist after having existed. Whatever was nonexistent, or will become nonexistent, cannot be necessary in existence or eternal and without beginning.

Furthermore, even supposing that these people have established a necessarily existent being, nothing in their proof establishes that it is distinct from the heavens and celestial spheres. This is one of the points on which al-Ghazālī and others exposed the incoherence of their arguments, but