If it is said:

“Each one has another that perfects it, and so on without end,”

then this entails an infinite regress of causal agents, which is necessarily false and is deemed false by the consensus of rational people.

For positing an endless series of causal agents, none of which is independently causative, does not entail the existence of any one of them, of all of them, or of their aggregate. Yet the Originator of all existents must necessarily exist.

If one of these were assumed to be perfect, its perfection would not derive from itself, but from another, and so on. It would then follow that none of these things possessed any perfection. If the first were assumed to be perfect, this would entail combining two contradictories.

Since His perfection is intrinsic and does not depend upon another, perfection is necessary for Him in Himself, and no perfection possible for Him can be absent from Him. Rather, every perfection possible for Him is necessary for Him. This is acknowledged by the majority of scholars of jurisprudence, hadith, Sufism, theology, philosophy, and others.

Indeed, this holds true even of His effects: Whatever He wills comes to be, and whatever He does not will does not come to be; it is either impossible in itself or impossible due to another. Thus, there is nothing but a necessary existent—necessary either in itself or through another—or something nonexistent, whose nonexistence is due either to itself or to another.

If the complete necessitating factor of something possible obtains, it becomes necessary through another; otherwise, it is impossible due to another. Whatever is possible in itself, therefore, is either necessary through another or impossible due to another.

Allah, Glorified is He, has made clear that He has a greater claim to perfection than any other and that no other is equal to Him with respect to