Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

to which it might be attached. ‘ And since it was necessary that it should
be attached to the existents, it had to be attached either in the way our
knowledge is attached to it, or in a superior way, and since the former is
impossible, this knowledge must be attached in a superior way and
according to a more perfect existence of existents than the existence of
the existents to which our intellect is attached. For true knowledge is
conformity with the existent, z and if His knowledge is superior to ours and
His knowledge is attached to the existent in a way superior to our
attachment to the existent, then there must be two kinds of existence, a
superior and an inferior, and the superior existence must be the cause of
the inferior.
And this is the meaning of the ancient philosophers, when they say that
God is the totality of the existents which He bestows on us in His bounty
and of which He is the agent. And therefore the chiefs of the Sufis say:
there is no reality besides Him. But all this is the knowledge of those who
are steadfast in their knowledge, and this must not be written down and it
must not be made an obligation of faith, and therefore it is not taught by
the Divine Law. And one who mentions this truth where it should not be
mentioned sins, and one who withholds it from those to whom it should be
told sins too. And that one single thing can have different degrees of
existence can be learned from the different degrees of existence of the
sou1.
Ghazali says:
The second refutation is: ‘What prevents you, according
to your doctrine, from affirming God’s knowledge of
individuals, even if this implies His changing, for why do you
not believe that this kind of change is not impossible in God,
just as Jahm, one of the Mu’tazilites, says that His
knowledge of temporals is temporal’ and the later Karramites
say that God is the substratum of the temporal’? The true
believers refute these theories only by arguing that what
changes cannot be without change, and what cannot be
without change and without temporal occurrences is itself
temporal and not eternal. ‘ For you, however, according to
your doctrine the world is eternal but not without change,
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