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How did Avicenna describe God as the First Cause?

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Avicenna The title page of the 1556 edition of Avicenna's *The Canon of Medicine* (*Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb*). This edition (sometimes called the 1556 Basel edition) was translated by medieval scholar Gerard of Cremona.

Avicenna described God as the First Cause and the necessary Being, serving as the foundation of his theocentric cosmology. His conceptualization of God is rooted in his distinction between essence and existence.12

Avicenna argued that because the existence of contingent things cannot be accounted for by their essence alone, there must be an agent-cause that imparts existence to them. He posited that the universe is a chain of actual beings, where each link provides existence to the one below it. Because an actual infinite chain is impossible, he concluded that this sequence must terminate in a being that is wholly simple and one.1

For this First Cause, essence and existence are identical; therefore, God is self-sufficient and does not require another to grant existence. As a necessary and eternal being, God is the necessitating cause of the entire chain of contingent existence, with all creation—including intelligences, souls, and celestial bodies—eternally dependent upon Him.12