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[The first reason:] after a body exists it is stronger and better able to produce its like. So if it had made itself when weak, it ought surely to make its like when strong — yet since it is unable to make its like when strong, it is impossible that it made itself when weak.
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The second reason: when we try in our minds to conceive of a thing creating itself, we find it impossible across both divisions of time. If we attempt to suppose it created itself before it existed — we know that at that point it was non-existent, and the non-existent creates nothing. And if we try to suppose it created itself after it existed — then since its existence preceded, it was already sufficiently there without needing to create itself. There is no third option other than the present moment, which permits no actual creation.
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The third reason: if we imagine a body capable of making itself, we can only do so by also imagining it capable of refraining from making itself. But if we imagine that, we have it simultaneously existing and non-existent — since 'capable' can only be predicated of something existent, while positing that it might refrain from making itself implies it was non-existent.
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Whatever leads to combining existing and non-existent for a single thing at once is null and void. And I found that scripture had already ruled out a thing making itself, with the words 'He made us, and not we ourselves' (Ps 100:3); and in God's rebuke and punishment of one who said 'My Maker made me for myself' (cf. Job 40:19).
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After these considerations that ruled out for me the possibility that a thing originated itself and established that something other originated it, I examined through the art of inquiry whether that originator made it from something or from nothing, as the scriptures state. I found that the notion of its origination from something is rationally incorrect, because it is self-contradictory.
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For when we say 'He originated it,' that entails that its essence was newly invented and initiated; but if we add 'from something,' we entail that its essence was pre-existing — neither newly invented nor initiated. These two claims contradict each other. But when we put to reason 'He originated it from nothing,' we find this to be a coherent statement.
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An objector might say: you posited a Maker for things in the domain of the knowable because you do not observe in the perceptible realm any artifact without an artisan, nor any effect without a cause. But you also have not seen in the perceptible realm anything that exists except from a prior thing — so why did you make 'no effect without a cause' your proof, and not also 'nothing exists except from a prior thing'? Both hold equally in the observable world.
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I reply: 'whether something comes from something or from nothing' is precisely the question I sought to prove — and the thing whose truth is being established cannot itself serve as evidence for one or the other of the two positions. It can only be established by appeal to something else. Since 'no effect without a cause' is a proposition whose truth is not in dispute, I used it as my proof — and it decided for me in favor of 'something from nothing.'
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I also saw clearly that whatever we imagine the existing things to have been created from must itself be eternal — and being eternal, it would be equal to the Creator in eternity. In that case it would necessarily be beyond the Creator's power to create things from it, and it would not accept the Creator's command to act as He wishes and take form as He desires — unless
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...we add in our imagination a third factor that distinguishes between the two, making one the maker and the other the made. But if we say that, we are positing something non-existent — since we only have maker and made, and nothing else.
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I also recalled that our original question was about who made the very essence of things. It is universally agreed that a maker must precede what he makes — and it is by preceding the essence that a thing becomes newly-made. But if we hold the essence to be eternal, the maker no longer precedes what he makes; and neither of the two would then have more claim to be the cause of the other's existence — which is patently absurd.
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I also recalled that the claim 'He created something from something' — when one follows it through consistently — leads to the conclusion that He created nothing at all. For the intuitive ground of 'something from something' is that perceptible things deserve this description; we can equally say that perceptible things deserve to be in a place, in a time, with a shape, with a magnitude, in a spatial relation, in a relational position, and all similar conditions.
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If all those conditions have the same standing as 'from something,' then fulfilling each one in turn — saying that He created from something in a pre-existing place, at a pre-existing time, in a pre-existing form, with a pre-existing magnitude, in a pre-existing relation, and so on for all — leaves nothing left to create; creation is thereby annulled in a single stroke.
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I also established: if we do not accept that something can exist with nothing prior to it, then nothing at all can ever exist. For when we suppose something from something, the second thing must itself come from a third; the third from a fourth; and this extends without end. And what has no end cannot be completed, so that nothing would exist — yet here we are, existing.
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Had the chain of prior things before us not been finite and terminable, we would not exist. What reason delivers to us here is exactly what is prescribed in the books of the prophets — that bodies were originated from the Creator — as in the verse: 'Before the mountains were born, before You formed earth and world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God' (Ps 90:2).
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Chapter 3. Now that I have established these three principles by the path of inquiry, as they are also confirmed by prophetic report and by demonstration — namely: (1) that things are newly-made, (2) that something other made them, and (3) that it made them from nothing — this constitutes the first doctrine of this maamar, which is inquiry into first principles. I shall follow it with twelve doctrines of those who disagree with us on this belief, making thirteen in all. I shall explain the argument of each group, and what refutes it; if any of them has some resemblance to the scriptural texts I shall clarify that as well — with God's help. I say:
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The second doctrine: those who say that alongside the Creator there were eternal spiritual things (rūḥāniyyāt) without beginning, and that He created these composite bodies from them. Their argument was that nothing can exist except from something. When they took their thought to lofty heights and attempted to imagine for themselves how the Creator fashioned the composite things from the spiritual entities,
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they said: imagine that He gathered from them small points — the indivisible parts — picturing them as fine as the finest dust; He formed from them a straight line; then He cut that line into two halves; then He crossed one half over the other in an X-shape, forming something like the Greek letter sigma, which resembles the Arabic lām-alif without a base; then He nailed them at the intersection; then He cut them from the point of intersection, and from one half He made the great upper sphere, and from the other He made the [remaining] spheres