In his Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), Ibn Rushd contrasted his views on the nature of causality with those expressed by al-Ghazali in his Tahafut al-Falasifah (Incoherence of the Philosophers):

Al-Ghazali says: Our opponent claims that the agent of the burning is the fire exclusively; this is a natural, not a voluntary agent, and cannot abstain from what is in its nature when it is, brought into contact with a receptive substratum. This we deny, saying: The agent of the burning is God, through His creating the black in the cotton and the disconnection of its parts, and. it is God who made the cotton burn and made it ashes either through the intermediation of angels of without intermediation. For fire is a dead body which has no action, and what is the proof that it is the agent...