The earlier philosophers, particularly the ancient Greeks like Aristotle, affirmed the existence of the Necessary Being through the argument from motion, not through the method of possibility that later became central to Ibn Sina’s thought. Ibn Sina introduced a new method, arguing that all possible things need a cause, and that this chain must end in a Necessary Being.
However, this method was heavily criticised. When Ibn Rushd (Averroes), the grandson, critiqued Al-Ghazali’s Tahafut al-Falasifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), he could not defend Ibn Sina’s argument.
Instead, he agreed that the method was weak and proposed his own alternative. But that alternative, in turn, was considered even weaker than Ibn Sina’s approach.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, in his critique of the philosophers, particularly in Tahafut al-Falasifah (pp. 162–163), addressed the claim that the Necessary Being has only one essence and no multiplicity.
He quoted their list of descriptions for the Necessary Being, such as eternal, knowing, willing, intelligent, agent, generous, and pure goodness and challenged how these numerous attributes could be reduced to a single, indivisible essence.
Al-Ghazali pointed out a key inconsistency: Philosophers of the likes of Ibn Sina argued that all these attributes were merely negations (e.g., not ignorant) or relational (e.g., cause of the universe), and that these do not imply real multiplicity in essence.
But al-Ghazali argued that this claim—that such multiplicity is impossible, has no sound proof and is actually rejected by the majority of Muslims except the Muʿtazilah. He pressed the philosophers to demonstrate how they knew with certainty that multiple attributes cannot exist within the Necessary Being.
Their philosophical argument was built on the idea that if the essence and the attribute are independent, then there are two beings, not one. If they depend on each other, neither can be truly necessary, as both would be caused. This reasoning leads them to claim that any kind of real attribute for the Necessary Being undermines His self-sufficiency and absolute necessity.
But this foundational claim is where the theological disagreement lies: philosophers deny multiplicity in the Necessary Being. However Ahlus Sunnah, the early imams and Al-Ghazali affirm that Allah has real attributes that are not simply negations or relations. The claim that real attributes introduce unacceptable multiplicity is itself unproven and contested.
Translation: The Early Philosophers and the Critique of Ibn Sina’s Method
As for the earlier philosophers, they did not affirm the Necessary Being through this method, but rather through the method of motion. So when Ibn Rushd the grandson came to criticise Abu Hamid for what he mentioned, he could not defend Ibn Sina. Instead, he clarified that this method followed by Ibn Sina is weak, just as Abu Hamid had said. Ibn Rushd argued for another method that he thought was strong, but it was even weaker than the method of Ibn Sina.
When Abu Hamid mentioned the claim attributed to the philosophers like Ibn Sina and others, and explained that they deny those five kinds of multiplicity, he said: “And yet they say about the Creator, the Exalted, that He is a beginning, the first, existent, a single essence, eternal, lasting, knowing, intelligent, intellect, intelligible, agent, creator, willing, able, living, lover, beloved, delightful, delighted, generous, and pure goodness. And they claimed that all of this refers to one meaning, with no multiplicity in it.” (see Tahafut al Falasifah, pages 162 to 163)
He said: “This is one of the strange things. They say that the essence of the First Principle is one, and that the multiplicity of names comes only from things being attributed to it, or things being related to it, or from things being negated from it. But neither negation nor relation creates multiplicity in the thing they are ascribed to. The issue lies in reducing all of these names to mere negations and relations”
Abu Hamid said: “So it may be said to them: how did you know that multiplicity is impossible in this sense? You are in opposition to all Muslims except the Muʿtazilah. So what is the proof? When someone says: multiplicity is impossible for the Necessary Being, even when the attributes being described are one, then this returns to the claim that multiple attributes are impossible in Him. But this is exactly where the disagreement lies, and its impossibility is not known with certainty” (see Tahafut al Falasifah, page 171).
Their argument is: If the attribute and the one described by it are each independent of the other, then there are two Necessary Beings. But if one needs the other, then neither is the Necessary Being. And if one needs the other, then one is caused and the other is the Necessary, and whichever one is caused must depend on something else. This leads to the essence of the Necessary Being being connected to a cause.
Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wal-naql (3/390-392)
