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Part One · Chapter Seventy-Five — Five Kalām Methods for Proving Divine Unity
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I shall likewise explain to you in this chapter the proofs for unity according to the opinion of the mutakallimūn. They said: the one that existence points to as its Maker and Creator is one. The mother-methods of their proofs for unity are two: the method of mutual hindrance and the method of differentiation.
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Method One — the method of mutual hindrance — is the one the majority of them favor. Its meaning: if the world had two gods, it would necessarily be the case that the atom which cannot be free of one of two contraries would be either free of both simultaneously — which is impossible — or that both contraries would be combined in one location at one time — which is also impossible. For example: the atom or atoms that one god wills now to heat, the other wills to cool; either they will be neither hot nor cold, owing to the mutual obstruction of the two acts — impossible, since every body is receptive of one of the two contraries — or this body will be hot and cold simultaneously.
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When they perceived the weakness of this method — even though some impulse drew them to it — they turned to another method.
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Method Two: they said if there were two gods it would necessarily follow that they share some meaning in common and differ in some meaning present in one and absent in the other — by which difference comes about. This is a genuinely philosophical, demonstrative method, which I shall elaborate when I mention the views of the philosophers on this subject. But this method also does not hold against everyone who believes in attributes — for the Eternal, in their view, has multiple, differentiated meanings, and the meaning of knowledge is distinct from the meaning of power, and the meaning of power is distinct from the meaning of will; so there is nothing to prevent each of the two gods from having meanings some of which he shares with the other and some of which distinguish him from the other.
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Method Three: this too is a method requiring a premise from the premises of those who follow this way. Some of them — among the earlier ones — believe that God wills by a will, and that will is not an additional meaning in the essence of the Creator but is a will subsisting in no substrate. On the basis of this premise — the explanation of which, let alone its conception, is remote, as you see — they said: a single will subsisting in no substrate cannot belong to two, for they said one cause cannot necessitate two effects in their own essence.
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Method Four: they said the existence of an act necessarily points to an agent but does not inform us of the number of agents. Nor is there any difference between the claim that God is two, or three, or twenty, or any other number — and this is clear and obvious. If you say: this argument does not point to the impossibility of plurality in God but only to ignorance of the number — it is possible He is one and possible He is many — then he completes his proof by saying: God's existence admits no possibility but is necessary, and this abolishes the possibility of plurality.
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Method Five: some later thinkers claimed to have found a demonstrative proof for unity — namely, the argument from mutual need. Its explanation: if these existents were complete through the act of one god alone, the second would be superfluous and unneeded; but if this existence could neither be completed nor ordered except by both together, then each would be accompanied by deficiency, owing to his need of the other, and thus neither is self-sufficient.
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This is merely a branch of the mutual hindrance argument. And one can object to this form of reasoning by saying: not everyone who fails to do what it is not in his nature to do is called incapable — for we do not call a human being weak merely because he cannot move a thousand quintals, nor do we attribute incapacity to God for being unable to corporealize Himself, or to create His equal, or to create a square whose side equals its diagonal. Likewise we do not say He is incapable for failing to create a single thing whose existence is necessarily two.
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Some of them found themselves so at a loss that one said unity is accepted on scriptural authority. The mutakallimūn expressed great revulsion at this and looked down upon the one who said it. But I, for my part, consider the one among them who said this to be a man of very sound mind, far from accepting sophistry — for when he did not hear among their arguments anything that was a genuine demonstration, and found that his own soul was not put to rest by what they claimed were proofs, he said: this is something to be accepted from Scripture. For these groups have left for existence no stable nature from which sound inference can be drawn, and have left the intellect no straight natural faculty by which to produce sound conclusions — all of this they did deliberately so as to posit an existence by which to demonstrate what cannot otherwise be demonstrated. This necessitated that we fall short of proof for what is genuinely demonstrable. There is no complaint but to God, and to those of good faith among people of reason.