2.1.2 The Three Conclusive Categories of
Existence
At the beginning of chapter 59
of the Meccan Revelations, Ibn al-Arabi explains that Allah, the Exalted, is
the First, and there is no first-ness to anything before Him nor to anything
else, whether that exists through Him or independent of Him. He is the One,
the Unique, in His Firstness, Glory be to Him. There is nothing that is
self-existent apart from Him, because He is the All-Sufficient in Himself,
absolutely, and Independent of all other beings.
Following Ibn Sina’s familiar
theological school, Ibn al-Arabi divides all things, in terms of their type
of existence, into three conclusive categories: necessary, possible (or
“contingent” ), and impossible [II.293.1, II.575-576]. Only Allah’s existence
is described as “Necessary” or Self-Existent, while absolute non-existence
is the impossible. the World, on the other hand, is described as “possible” ,
or potential, because it is possible to exist, but in order to actually come
into existence it needs a determining cause who has to be pre-existent and
self-existent; none other than Allah. Therefore, the World is originally
non-existence that is possible to exist, and it is always in need of the
Creator in order to bring it into existence. The difference between absolute
non-existence and possible non-existence is that the latter exists in
Allah’s Knowledge, even before it actually comes into real existence, and this foreknowledge is eternal because His knowledge is not other than Himself
[I.300.32, II.114.15]. So the World, spatial and temporal, eternally existed
or was determined in Allah’s knowledge, but it is being continuously brought
into real existence ad infinitum. When Allah brings the entities into
real existence, He does so for their sake and not for His, because for Him
they are still as they were on their spatial and temporal states, but He is only revealing to them their entities and states, one by one,
infinitely and successively. So everything is in need of Allah, the Exalted,
for the existence of its essence, not for its essence itself, because
its essence is eternally fixed, or immutable in Allah’s foreknowledge, as we
explained in the constant entities in Chapter IV of Volume III.
The science of Time is a noble science, that reveals the secret of Eternity. Only the Elites of Sages may ever come to know this secret. It is called the First Age, or the Age of ages, from which time is emerging.
