Chapter One

On Establishing the Maker, and the Argument against whoever rejected that and invalidated it.

So we say—and success is through Allah:

When we saw that things must necessarily have an element and a substance, a beginning and an end, a manifester to manifest them, and an agent to enact them, we knew by the judgment of necessity that there must be for every craft a maker, and for every act an agent. [For] we have not found a building except that it has a builder, nor a writing except that it has a writer.

And when we saw that everything in the world is made (masnu’) ¹, we knew that it has a Maker who made it.

So if you say: "Verily, the made things are the act of Nature (al-Tabi'ah), and it [Nature] is eternal (Qadimah) according to us," we say to you: This statement is of two aspects:

Either we say that it is eternal, having no beginning—and this is the definition of Eternity (al-Qidam).

Or we say: "It is eternal but has a beginning," then you have contradicted your statement, and you have negated eternity from it, and affirmed upon it the quality of being originated (San'at al-Hadath).