The World and Its Origination: Creation and Philosophical Eternity

1. The world’s origination: the central question

The question of ḥudūth al-ʿālam is whether beings other than God are eternal in themselves or came to exist after nonexistence. This concerns not merely the arrangement of the cosmos, but the relation of Creator to creation, the meaning of eternity, and dependence in existence.

الكلام في حدوث العالم
The discussion of the world's origination.

A rigorous answer first defines what the world includes and then distinguishes originated (ḥādith) from eternal (qadīm). Dependence on a cause and existence after nonexistence are different claims. Confusing them obscures the actual dispute.

2. Defining al-ʿālam

والعالم أي ما سوى الله تعالى من الموجودات
The world means all existing things other than God Most High.

The phrase mā siwā Allāh establishes the boundary: God is not one member of a created totality. The term existing things makes the subject actual created beings, not merely imagined objects or names.

The term therefore does not mean only Earth or the visible universe. Created realities beyond our senses also fall within the general scope, insofar as their existence is established.

3. How the world points to its Creator

ما يعلم به الصانع
That by which the Maker may be known.

One explanation of the word ʿālam is that it points beyond itself to its Creator. Reflection on order, determination, and dependence opens the way to arguments for a maker. Ṣāniʿ here denotes the One who brings the world into being.

Knowing an agent through evidence does not make the evidence identical with that agent. The cosmos may serve as a sign of its Creator without itself being the Creator's essence.

4. Different uses of the word world

يقال: عالم الأجسام، وعالم الأعراض، وعالم النباتات، وعالم الحيوانات، وعالم الجمادات
We speak of the world of bodies, accidents, plants, animals, and inanimate things.

ʿĀlam can name all creation collectively or one class within it. Bodies have spatial extension, whereas accidents refer to states and qualities that do not subsist independently. Plants, animals, and inanimate entities constitute another kind of classification.

These classifications overlap: a tree is both a plant and a body. Speaking of several 'worlds' does not imply several independent creators or entirely disconnected realms.

5. Why the divine attributes are not included

فتخرج صفات الله تعالى
Thus the attributes of God Most High are excluded.

Divine attributes are not treated as members of the class of created things. Other than God is not a merely verbal exclusion of the divine name: it preserves the ontological difference between divine attributes and originated creatures.

For example, divine knowledge is not a newly arising state like human learning. Human understanding increases and decreases; God's knowledge is not subject to such change. The theological treatment of the two kinds of attributes must therefore remain distinct.

6. Divine attributes: neither simply identical nor separate

لأنها ليست غير الذات، كما أنها ليست عينها
For they are not other than the Essence, just as they are not simply identical to it.

This is specialized Sunni kalām terminology. 'Other' does not here mean a fully separate, independently existing thing detachable from the divine essence. Conversely, denying simple identity does not deny the real meanings of knowledge, power, and will; these attributes have distinct intelligible significations.

Treating 'same' and 'other' as ordinary, unqualified everyday opposites creates a false contradiction. The intended point is that attributes of perfection are affirmed without turning them into detached created entities or newly arising accidents.

7. What originated (ḥādith) means

حادث أي خرج من العدم إلى الوجود
An originated thing is one that comes from nonexistence into existence.

بمعنى أنه كان معدوما فوجد
Meaning that it was nonexistent and then existed.

In this account of temporal origination, a being has a beginning. A new condition appearing in an already existing object is not the same as the object itself first existing. Leaves changing on a tree and the tree's own initial coming-to-be are distinct questions.

Nor does a creature's continued existence make it beginningless. Eternity without a beginning concerns the origin of existence, not merely persistence thereafter.

8. Beginninglessness versus everlasting existence

In this discussion qadīm means a being not preceded by nonexistence; ḥādith is the opposite, one that comes to exist after not existing. Continued duration asks something else: an entity can begin and thereafter endure without becoming beginningless.

Imagine a building that remains standing for a very long time. Its durability does not erase the fact that construction had a beginning. This is only a conceptual illustration; the relation of God to creation is not identical in every respect to human manufacture.

Thus everlasting duration and beginninglessness must not be confused. The question here concerns the world's temporal commencement.

9. The claim concerns every part of creation

لجميع أجزائه من السماوات وما فيها والأرض وما عليها
Of all its parts: the heavens and what is in them, and the earth and what is upon it.

The claim that the world is originated is not merely a label attached to the whole: it includes its created constituents. The heavens, Earth, and the diverse created beings associated with them fall under the general assertion.

Affirming the beginning of one created being while declaring another created being beginningless would not satisfy this universal claim. Still, the evidence for a particular case and the evidence for the general proposition may require distinct analysis.

10. A universal proposition and particular examples

Origination of all creatures
The assertion that all existing created beings other than God are originated.

This expresses a universal proposition. An animal, planet, or human body provides a particular illustration of beginnings, but no single instance automatically demonstrates the full universal claim. The argument must reach all relevant kinds of created entities.

This explains the later importance of the distinction between entities (aʿyān) and accidents (aʿrāḍ) in kalām. The purpose is not to list selected events, but to construct a general proof about creation.

11. The real issue disputed with philosophers

خلافا للفلاسفة
Contrary to the philosophers.

In this historical setting, the philosophers principally denotes a specific Peripatetic philosophical account that treats some underlying principle of the world as beginningless. It should not be generalized to every philosopher in history or to all contemporary physical scientists.

The disagreement is not whether change occurs: both sides may acknowledge change. It concerns the temporal beginning of the world as a whole or of its proposed underlying principles.

12. Substance, body, and accident

Substance (jawhar) denotes an underlying or subsisting reality, while accident (ʿaraḍ) denotes a quality or state existing in a subject. Body (jism) denotes something extended in spatial directions. The details of these terms differ between theologians and philosophical schools.

For illustration, a wooden board is a body; being warm or cold is a state. Warmth should not be imagined as a second independent wooden board. Yet this illustration alone does not establish a complete theory of indivisible atoms or prime matter.

Distinguishing the terms prepares the question: can the underlying substrate, the body's form, or their combination be beginningless?

13. Hayūlā: prime matter

Hayūlā is the philosophical concept of prime matter understood by its receptivity to different bodily forms. It is not itself an ordinary piece of wood, clay, or metal already possessing a determinate shape and kind.

In this scheme a body is not simply a heap of stuff: the relation of matter to form makes an identifiable body. Prime matter is posited to explain what remains as different bodily forms arise.

Critical distinction: an observable physical object is not identical to prime matter proposed as a philosophical abstraction. Whether prime matter is eternal still requires argument rather than being assumed from the model.

14. Corporeal form and spatial extension

Corporeal form (ṣūrah jismiyyah) is the principle by which a body is conceived as extended in length, breadth, and depth. In the philosophical model, prime matter represents receptivity, while corporeal form accounts for a body’s actually being a body.

A wooden board and an iron bar differ in material and specific characteristics, but both are spatially extended bodies. Their shared bodily extension illustrates the intended concept.

The proposition that bodies necessarily consist of matter and form is a philosophical premise, not itself a conclusion established merely by defining the terms. It remains open to theological analysis.

15. Can prime matter exist without form?

A central philosophical premise states that prime matter cannot be wholly devoid of form, even if one form gives way to another. Philosophers use this premise in explaining a continuing substrate and successive forms.

But 'this matter cannot exist without some form' is not equivalent to 'this matter never began to exist'. A structural dependence between matter and form does not, by itself, prove the beginninglessness of the structure.

Two issues must therefore be tested separately: the claimed necessary connection between matter and form, and the further claim that their connection is eternal. The latter needs an argument of its own.

16. An individual bodily form

Distinguishing an individual from a kind is essential. Two wooden boards may share bodily extension yet differ in their specific dimensions, states, and individual identities.

In the philosophical account, the disappearance of one individual form does not necessarily end the entire series of forms of that kind. For example, melting changes a particular piece of ice. It does not, on its own, prove that matter has always existed.

The coming and going of individuals and the possible continuity of a kind are distinct questions. They must remain separate to represent the argument about the world's eternity correctly.

17. Specific form: what makes a kind

A specific form (ṣūrah nawʿiyyah) accounts, in this philosophical scheme, for a body’s belonging to a determinate kind. Corporeal form explains the common feature of being bodily; specific form is invoked to account for differences between kinds of bodies.

Wood and iron are both extended bodies but have different physical properties. The classical theory attempts to explain kinds through distinct forms; this is not a substitute for modern chemical descriptions.

Even if one grants that different specific forms succeed one another in a substrate, this alone does not establish that the substrate, or every kind, has existed from eternity.

18. Classical examples of change of kind

In classical philosophy, examples such as water becoming air, or air becoming water, served to illustrate a change of specific form. The proposed explanation was that different forms might successively inform a common underlying substrate.

This is a historical philosophical model, not a statement of modern experimental physics. Modern accounts of states and chemical composition use different explanatory frameworks.

The relevant logical lesson remains: observing change is one claim; asserting that the proposed underlying substrate is beginningless is another. The first alone does not establish the second.

19. Shape versus substantial form

Shape (shakl) concerns an external configuration such as roundness or rectangularity. By contrast, corporeal form accounts for bodily extension and specific form for belonging to a kind.

Clay made into a cup or a brick changes shape. Such change does not itself prove the creation or eternity of a philosophical underlying substance. Similarly, members of one kind may differ in shape while remaining members of that kind.

Confusing accidental configuration with specific nature or underlying substrate distorts arguments concerning origination and eternity.

20. The historical claim of eternal heavens

حيث ذهبوا إلى قدم السماوات جواهرها وصورها وأشكالها
For they held the heavens, their substances, forms, and shapes to be eternal.

The claim is not merely that celestial bodies are extremely old. It denies a temporal beginning to them. In the particular Peripatetic account, heavenly bodies were treated differently from mutable terrestrial elements.

This describes a historical philosophical school, not a determination of the age of the universe by contemporary science. The theological question is whether a beginningless portion of the world can be justified by valid reasoning.

21. The four elements and generic eternity

وقدم العناصر جواهرها وصورها، لكن بالنوع
And the eternity of the elements, their substances and forms, but with respect to kind.

Classical natural philosophy counted fire, air, water, and earth as the four elements. In this account individual elemental bodies may change while their kinds, or the succession of those kinds, are claimed to be beginningless.

Individual eternity would mean that this particular entity has never begun; generic eternity claims a kind has always had some instance, even though particular instances come and go. The replacement of individuals does not by itself prove the beginninglessness of the series.

22. Continual succession is not proved by successive individuals

لكن بالنوع بمعنى أنها لم تخل قط عن صورة
But by kind, meaning they have never lacked some form.

This describes an alleged uninterrupted succession of forms: one form disappears and another follows, with no absolute gap in the series. The claim is about the eternity of the succession rather than the persistence of one particular individual.

Merely observing that present things arose from earlier things is insufficient to prove this. Every observed case having a predecessor is one proposition; the entire series actually lacking a beginning is a further proposition requiring its own justification.

23. Two meanings assigned to origination

نعم أطلقوا القول بحدوث ما سوى الله تعالى
Yes, they also used the term origination for what is other than God Most High.

Shared use of the word ḥādith does not guarantee agreement in doctrine. One writer may mean existence after nonexistence, while another means dependence on another for existence. The expression is shared but the concept is not.

One must therefore compare the defined claims, not merely the vocabulary. A position that denies a temporal beginning is not identical to the theologians' position just because both use the word 'origination'.

24. Dependence on another versus preceding nonexistence

لكن بمعنى الاحتياج إلى الغير، لا بمعنى سبق العدم عليه
But in the sense of dependence upon another, not in the sense of being preceded by nonexistence.

Dependence (iḥtiyāj ilā al-ghayr) asks whether a being exists through itself or requires another. Preceding nonexistence (sabaq al-ʿadam) asks whether it previously did not exist. The first concerns ontological dependence, the second temporal origination.

Affirming dependence does not, without further argument, amount to affirming a temporal beginning. This distinction is decisive because causal dependence and temporal commencement call for different analyses.

25. Preparing the proof through entities and accidents

The subsequent proof examines entities (aʿyān), realities treated as subsisting in an appropriate sense, and accidents (aʿrāḍ), qualities or states that occur in a subject. Analyzing both is intended to clarify the world's structure and the reasoning concerning change and origination.

Collapsing heavens, earth, bodies, and their states into an undefined whole conceals the different steps of a proof. The distinction between entities and accidents helps identify what is being asserted of which kind of thing and what would establish that assertion.

The foundations are now clear: the world comprises existing things other than God; divine attributes are excluded; theologians affirm existence after nonexistence; and the rival philosophical position distinguishes causal dependence from temporal commencement.