This (1), however, is false. If that preponderance does not reach the level of necessity, it remains possible and therefore requires a determining factor. The only alternatives are necessary existence and possible existence, and the possible admits of both existence and nonexistence.

A third faction among the Qadariyya [and the Jahmiyya, along with those who follow them among the disciples of Abū al-Husayn (2) and other theologians, as well as groups among the adherents of the four imams, the Shia, and others] (3) maintain that an agent endowed with power can make one possibility preponderant without any determining factor. They thus hold that the will comes into being without any determining factor to bring it about; that Allah’s will comes into being without inhering in any locus; and that, even with this will, the act remains possible rather than necessary. This is one of their foundational principles concerning which they have fallen into inconsistency in the questions of Allah’s action and the origination of the world, and in the question of the act (4) of the servant and predestination.

The Fifth Aspect:

It may be said: The expression “acting by intrinsic necessity” (5) is ambiguous. If what is meant by it is what the philosophers (6) intend—namely, that He is a complete cause which necessarily entails (7) the world—then this is false. A complete cause necessarily entails its effect; and if the world were an effect inseparable from an eternal cause, it could contain no temporal events, for temporal events do not arise (8) from a complete eternal cause. This contradicts sensory experience.