Originator of the heavens and the earth, that is, originating His heavens and earth without there being any preceding substratum or period of time, nay, they are shadows of His essence and the origination point of His knowledge, illumined by His luminous name, existing by His external existence. Were it not for the aspect of contingency and rational consideration as per things known with certainty, their existences would not be [existences] in the first place, since without Him they are nothing. Thus they exist with Him not relatively [speaking] but through the verification of His existence and they cannot be other than Him through separation but by rational consideration, for on the basis of their being entities they are created things and on the basis of their reality they are true; and when He decrees a thing, that is, He rules that it be, He but says to it 'Be', and it is, in other words, all that is needed is the connection between that [thing] and His will and it comes into existence, without the intrusion of time or the mediation of a thing, nay, [it comes into existence] together [with His will]. That connection is His statement ['Be'], for otherwise there would be no words and no sound.
