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Part One · Chapter Sixty-Nine — God as Form, Cause, and End of the World
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The philosophers, as you know, call God, exalted be He, the first cause and the first reason; whereas those well known as the mutakallimūn flee from this designation entirely and call Him the Agent, supposing that there is a great difference between saying 'cause' and 'reason' and saying 'Agent.' For they said: if we say He is a cause, the existence of the effect is necessitated, and this leads to the eternity of the world, and that the world follows from Him by necessity; whereas if we say 'Agent,' the existence of the artifact does not follow necessarily together with it, since the agent may precede his act — indeed they cannot conceive the meaning of an agent's being an agent except by preceding his act.
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This is the view of one who does not distinguish between what is in potency and what is in act. What you should know is that there is no difference between saying 'cause' or 'agent' in this respect: for if you take 'cause' in potency as well, it precedes its effect in time; but if it is a cause in act, then its effect exists necessarily with its being a cause in act. Similarly, when you take 'agent' as an agent in act, the existence of its artifact follows necessarily — for the builder before he builds the house is not a builder in act but a builder in potency, just as the matter of that house before it is built is a house in potency; but when he builds, he is a builder in act and something built necessarily exists then. So we have gained nothing by preferring the designation 'Agent' over the designation 'cause and reason.'
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What led the philosophers to call Him, exalted be He, 'cause' and 'reason' — rather than calling Him 'Agent' — was not their well-known opinion about the eternity of the world, but rather other meanings I shall now summarize for you. It has been made clear in natural science that there are causes for everything that has a cause, and that they are four: matter, form, agent, and end; and that some are proximate and some are remote. Among their views that I myself do not contest is that God, mighty and glorious, is the Agent and He is the Form and He is the End; therefore they said He is 'cause' and 'reason,' to encompass these three causes — namely, that He should be the Agent of the world, its form, and its end.
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The aim here is that He, exalted be He, is the Agent of the particular acts that occur in the world just as He is the Agent of the whole world. I say: it has been made clear in natural science that for each of these four kinds of causes, a cause must also be sought, so that for a generated thing there are found these four proximate causes, and for those causes there are also causes, and for the causes there are causes, until one arrives at the first causes. In this way every act in existence is attributed to God, even if a proximate agent has performed it — He is the most remote cause from the standpoint of being an Agent.
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Likewise the natural forms that come into being and pass away — when we trace them we find that a preceding form must have prepared this matter to receive this form, and that preceding form in turn was preceded by yet another, until we arrive at the ultimate form, which is necessary for the existence of all these intermediate forms. That ultimate form throughout all existence is God, exalted be He. Do not suppose that by saying He is the ultimate form for the whole world we are pointing to the 'ultimate form' of which Aristotle speaks in the Metaphysics, namely the form that neither comes into being nor passes away — for that form mentioned there is a natural form, not a separate intellect.
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And likewise in every end: a thing that has an end — you can seek a further end for that end. As for example: the chair's matter is wood, its agent is the carpenter, its form is the square shape of such-and-such a kind, and its end is sitting upon it. You can ask: what is the end of sitting on the chair? The answer is: that the sitter be elevated and raised above the ground. You can ask again: what is the end of being elevated above the ground? The answer is: that the sitter appear great in the eyes of those who see him. And by this it becomes clear that there is a chain of ends that ultimately leads back to His will and wisdom.
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For this reason it was said of Him that He is the end of ends. I have thus made clear to you in what respect it was said of Him, exalted be He, that He is Agent, form, and end; and therefore they called Him 'cause' and did not call Him merely 'Agent.'
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Know that some of those who speculate among the mutakallimūn reached such ignorance and presumption as to say: if the non-existence of the Creator were to be hypothetically supposed, the non-existence of what the Creator brought into existence — I mean the world — would not necessarily follow, since it is not necessary that the artifact be corrupted when the agent ceases to exist after having performed his act. What they said is correct if He were merely an Agent and if that thing acted upon did not require His sustaining of its continued existence — as when a carpenter dies, the cabinet is not corrupted. But since He, exalted be He, is also the form of the world as we explained, and He sustains its subsistence and permanence, it is impossible that the sustaining cause disappear while that which depends upon it continues, since it has no subsistence save through what it receives from it.
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This is the extent of what obligates one to say He is merely Agent, with no end and no form — stemming from illusion.