If there is a middle term...

If there is a middle term, which would make it a theoretical reflection, then al-Ghazali asks the philosophers to show this middle term. If, however, this knowledge is understood by necessity of reason, then why is it that the vast numbers of those who affirm temporal creation do not share this knowledge?

It is, therefore, according to al-Ghazali, the burden of the philosopher to make a “demonstrative proof according to the condition of logic that would show the impossibility of this.” For, according to al-Ghazali, all that the philosophers have shown is “an expression of unlikelihood,” and an analogy between divine and human will. Such an analogy, according to al-Ghazali, was false, for the eternal will does not resemble the human will.

Al-Ghazali commented that a philosopher might reply that one knows through necessity of reason that “a necessitating cause with all its conditions fulfilled is inconceivable without a necessitated effect.” To this, al-Ghazali answered that the philosophers resort to saying something similar, that divine knowledge is different than human knowledge when it comes to the philosopher’s belief that God’s knowledge does not necessitate any change in the one divine essence.

That is, there is no multiplicity in knowing multiple universals, or addition because of knowledge. Al-Ghazali admitted that some philosophers have seen the impossibility of this theory, which was already denied by Ash‘arite theology, and have put forth a belief that God thinks of God’s self alone - making God the apprehender, the intellect, and the intelligible of divine knowledge.[^33] Al-Ghazali believed that such an affirmation was foolish, for it would make God into the Creator who is not aware of his own creation.