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Perhaps a thinker will think and say: 'How can something come from nothing?' We reply: if creatures could reach an understanding of how this occurs, there would be no need for our intellects to single out the eternal Creator for it — everyone could do the like. Precisely because our intellects single out the Creator for this act is the proof that no creature can access the how of it.
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Whoever demands that we show him this how is demanding that we make ourselves and him into creators. But we can contemplate this act with our intellects without giving it a form or a visual image.
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Or perhaps the thinker will think about the space of the earth and ask: 'What was in this space before?' This question arises only from his ignorance of the definition of place — he imagines that place means whatever was positioned beneath things, and so demands a base for the base and sees an infinite regress and is bewildered.
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I must clarify: the true nature of place is not as he imagines. Place is the meeting of two bodies in contact — the point of their contact is called a place. In fact each of the two bodies becomes the place of the other. The earth today, in its roundness, has each part being the place of the adjacent part. When there was no earth and no bodies, the word 'place' had no application whatsoever.
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Perhaps the thinker will raise the same question about time, saying: 'Before these bodies came to be, how was that time bare of every existing thing?' This too is said only by one who is ignorant of the definition of time and imagines it to be something outside the celestial sphere containing the entire world within it. The true nature of time is not that; its true nature is the persistence of these existing things in successive states —
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...one after another, from the celestial sphere and all beneath it. When these existents did not exist, the word 'time' had no application whatsoever.
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Perhaps he will find these bodies underwhelming and say: 'Is this the full extent of power and wisdom?' We reply: He created from them what He knew we would eventually learn, preserve, and which would suffice us for inferring His lordship. If he asks 'did He leave anything uncreated?', we say: Is He not the Creator of all things?
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Perhaps he will ask: 'How can reason accept that the world is only four thousand, six hundred and ninety-three years old?' We reply: once we hold that the world is created, it must have a beginning. Consider: if we ourselves had been created at the one-hundred-year mark of creation, would we wonder and deny it? Certainly we would not deny it for that duration — still less should we deny it for the present span.
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Perhaps he will reason to himself: since by our lights whoever refrains from something is already acting by that very refraining — and the Creator had always been refraining from things until He created them — then His refraining was already an act extending through all that prior duration. We reply: human refrainings become actions only because human beings act on accidents: when they do not desire something, they become angry; when they do not dislike something, they love it. But the Creator's action is to originate bodies — and bodies have no opposite. So when He refrains from them, He has only done so as a prerequisite, and when He wills to originate them, nothing else could.
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Perhaps the thinker will ask: for what cause did the Creator create these existents? On this there are three answers. The first: we say He created them for no instrumental cause — yet this does not make it purposeless. A person becomes purposeless only when he acts without a cause and thereby squanders his own benefit. This does not apply to the Creator.
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The second answer: He intended by it to manifest and clarify His wisdom, as it is said: 'to make known to human beings His mighty deeds' (Ps 145:12).
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The third answer: He intended by it to benefit the creatures He would employ in service, so that they would obey Him — as it is said: 'I am YHWH your God who teaches you for your benefit, who leads you in the way you should go' (Isa 48:17).
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And if he asks: 'Why did He not create them earlier?' — we say: there was no prior time about which to ask. Furthermore, this is the nature of a free agent: to act when He wills. The First Maamar is complete.