His being originated (1). Accordingly, if the opponent allows that the substance may be bereft of temporal events (2) while still being, in principle, capable of receiving them, then no proof remains sound for claiming that the Blessed and Exalted Creator cannot receive events.

I say: This is the sum of his discourse on this foundational issue. He has provided no genuine proof for the point in question; rather, he merely defers the matter. Indeed, he cites five opinions:

First: the view held by his own followers—that a substance may not be devoid of every genus of accidents and of their opposites; instead, from each genus there must inhere at least one accident (3), whether that genus possesses an opposite or not—even though many people contend that this contradicts sensory experience, as in asserting that air, water, and fire possess taste and odor.

Second: the diametrically opposite view, which permits the substance to be empty of every accident whatsoever.

Third: that it may be empty of all accidents at the outset, though not permanently.

Fourth (4): that it is impossible for it to be empty of the modes, while it may be empty of everything else; this is the position of the Basran (5) Muʿtazilites.

Fifth: the impossibility of its being empty of the modes—but not of anything else—held by the Baghdadians (6), al-Kaʿbi and his followers, whose innovation is even more severe than that of the Basrans.

Yet he advances evidence only with respect to the modes, for he asserts that it is known necessarily that whatever precedes combination and separation is conceived only as combined or separated, and he further states that