the speculative theologians who say that action is an attribute of neither perfection nor deficiency. Allah Most High says:

“Is then He who creates like one who does not create? Will you not take heed?”

[Surah al-Nahl: 17]

If (1) that is so, reason dictates that an agent who acts through his power and will (2) is more perfect than one who possesses neither power nor will. An agent (3) possessed of power and choice, who performs one act after another, is more perfect than one whose effect necessarily accompanies him, leaving him unable to originate anything or change it from one state to another—if one can even conceive of an agent inseparably accompanied by his determinate effect (4). For one who can produce multiple effects and change them from one state to another is more perfect than one who cannot. Why, then, do they ascribe deficient agency to the Necessary Existent, assuming such a thing were possible? How could they, when what they have described is impossible and no agent can be conceived in the manner they claim?

Indeed, whoever posits something as the agent of an inseparable concomitant that never departs from it under any circumstances contradicts what people plainly recognize through reason. He would be told:

“That is either an attribute belonging to it (5) or a partner with it, not an effect produced by it.”

If rational people at large whose innate disposition remains sound were told:

“Allah created the heavens and the earth, yet they have always existed alongside Him,”

they would say:

“This contradicts His having created them. His creation of them can only be conceived if He created them after they had not existed.”

But if it were said:

“They have always existed” (6),

then to say nevertheless that He created them both would be—