The Mutakallimun refuse to believe that God's will is eternal, for fear of having a second eternal beside God. And so they say that whenever God wills, he creates a will for the purpose, and whenever he rejects anything he creates a "rejection" with which the objectionable thing is rejected. But this leads them to a worse predicament than the one from which they wish to escape, as we shall see. If God cannot create anything without having a will as the instrument in creating, and for this reason must first create a will for the purpose—how did he create this will? He must have had another will to create this will, and a third will to create the second, and so on ad infinitum, which is absurd. If he created the first will without the help of another will, why not create the things he wanted outright without any will? Besides, in making God will at a given time after a state of not willing, they introduce change in God.
As for the other dictum, that God is "living but not with life," "powerful but not with power," "knowing but not with knowledge," and so on; what do they mean by this circumlocution? If they say "living" to indicate that he is not dead, and add "but not with life," so as to prevent a comparison of him with other living things, why not say also, "He is body, but not like other bodies"? If the objection to calling him body is that body is composite, and what is composite must have been composed by someone and is not eternal, the same objection applies to "living." For "living" implies "breathing" and "possessed of sensation," hence also composite and created. If they reply, we mean life peculiar to him, we say why not also body peculiar to him? You see these people entangle themselves in their own sophisms, because they do not know what demonstration means.[174]
Having disposed of the errors of the Mutakallimun, we must now present our own method of investigation into the nature of God. To know a thing, we investigate its four causes—material, formal, efficient and final. What has no cause but is the cause of all things, cannot be known in this way. Still it is not altogether unknowable for this reason. Its essence cannot be known, but it may be known through its activities, or rather effects, which suggest attributes. We cannot therefore know concerning God what he is, nor how he is, nor on account of what, nor of what kind, nor where, nor when. For these can apply only to a created thing having a cause. But we can ask concerning him, whether he is; and this can best be known from his deeds.
We observe the things of the world and find that they are all composed of substance and accident, as we saw before (p. [131]). These are correlative, and one cannot exist without the other. Hence neither precedes the other. But accident is "new" (i. e., not eternal), hence so is substance. That accident is new is proved from the fact that rest succeeds motion and motion succeeds rest, hence accidents constantly come and go and are newly created.
Now if substance and accident are both new there must be something that brought them into being unless they bring themselves into being. But the latter is impossible, for the agent must either exist when it brings itself into being, or not. If it exists it is already there; if it does not exist, it is nothing, and nothing cannot do anything. Hence there must be a being that brought the world into existence. This is God.
God is one, for the cause of the many must be the one. If the cause of the many is the many, then the cause of the second many is a third many, and so on ad infinitum; hence we must stop with the one. God is to the world as unity is to number. Unity is the basis of number without being included in number, and it embraces number on all sides. It is the foundation of number; for if you remove unity, you remove number; but the removal of number does not remove unity. The one surrounds number on all sides; for the beginning of number is the one, and it is also the middle of number and the end thereof. For number is nothing but an aggregate of ones. Besides, number is composed of odds and evens, and one is the cause of odd as well as even.
If there were two eternal beings, they would either coincide in all respects, and they would be one and not two. Or they would differ. In the latter case, the world is either the work of both or of one only. If of both, they are not omnipotent, and hence not eternal. If of one only, then the other does not count, since he is not eternal, and there is only one.
By saying God is one we do not mean that he comes under the category of quantity, for quantity is an accident residing in a substance, and all substance is "new." What we mean is that the essence of God is true unity, not numerical unity. For numerical unity is also in a sense multiplicity, and is capable of multiplication and division. God's unity is alone separate and one in all respects.
God is not like any of his creatures. For if he were, he would be possessed of quality, since it is in virtue of quality that a thing is said to be like another, and quality is an accident contained in a substance.
God is self-sufficient and not in need of anything. For if he needed anything at all, it would be first of all the one who created him and made him an existent thing. But this is absurd, since God is eternal. We might suppose that he needs the world, which he created for some purpose, as we sometimes make things to assist us. But this, too, is impossible. For if he were dependent upon the world for anything, he could not create it. It is different with us. We do not create things; we only modify matter already existing.