The seventh chapter focuses on later developments in Sufi metaphysics concerning the question of causality and freedom. It examines writings of two influential followers of Ibn ʿArabī: Qūnawī and Qayṣarī. It will be argued that both Qūnawī and Qayṣarī agree with Ibn ʿArabī in their construction of causal efficacy and freedom of entities. What distinguishes both Qūnawī and Qayṣarī is their attempt to understand certain ideas attributed to the Philosophers and Ashʿarites in light of Ibn ʿArabī’s articulation of the concepts of existence (wujūd) and essence (māhiyya). Their writings include references both to the ideas of the Philosophers, such as secondary causality and emanationism, and to the ideas of Ashʿarites, such continuous creation, accidents, and “preponderance without reason” (tarjīh bi-lā murajjih). These thinkers selectively appropriate these ideas defended by different schools by using the philosophical possibilities suggested by the concepts of existence and essence. The result is a critical re-interpretation of emanationist and occasionalist elements within the larger framework of Ibn ʿArabī's metaphysics.

The sixth chapter offers a way of approaching the question of causality in Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysical system. Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysics is relational in the sense that entities are comprehended as the totality of their relationships to God. The divine names are theological categories denoting these relations. It is processual in that it perceives the world as the multiplicity of the incessant and ever-changing manifestations of the divine qualities. The world is recreated anew at each moment and entities are societies of divine acts or theophanies. In this framework, causal power is attributed to God, and causality refers to the regularity and predictability of the related theophanic individualities. The relational and processual qualities of Ibn ʿArabī metaphysics allow him to integrate participatory and occasionalist perspectives on causality. The chapter also examines how Ibn ʿArabī uses the idea of participation and the fixed archetypes (al-aʿyān thābita) to establish freedom.

The second chapter examines Ibn Sīnā’s account of causality and freedom through an analysis of his concepts of existence (wujūd) and essence (māhiyya). It will be argued that these concepts allow Ibn Sīnā to make a distinction between metaphysical and physical causality and, then, to locate physical causality within the larger context of metaphysical causality. As such, he offers an integration of Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic theories of causality. The result is a participatory theory of causality with strong Aristotelian elements that affirms freedom both in the created order and in the First.