that subsist in the Lord by His choice (1) is incompatible with His being an agent and an originator.

For this reason, when Ibn Sīnā set forth in his Ishārāt the positions of those who upheld either the eternity or the temporal origination of the world, the only views he mentioned were: that of those who affirmed alongside Allah [Most High] (2) eternal entities that were uncaused—such as the doctrine of the five eternal principles attributed to Democritus and adopted by Ibn Zakariyyā the physician (3); that of the Magians, who affirmed two eternal principles; that of the theologians among the Mu'tazilah and their like; and that of his own associates.

He did not mention the position of the leading authorities of the religious communities or that of the leading philosophers who affirmed that volitional matters subsist in the Lord and that He has always spoken [by His will] (4) whenever He wills and acted by His will. He set out the arguments of both sides and then instructed the reader (5) to choose whichever of the two positions he deemed stronger, all the while adhering to a conception of tawhīd that, for him, meant denying the attributes. He had made this a premise accepted by both himself and his opponents (6).

Al-Rāzī objected (7) to him that the question of the attributes has no bearing on the question of the world's temporal origination. The matter is not as al-Rāzī claimed. Rather, denying the attributes is among the factors that reinforce the specious argument—