the decisive proof (1) on which you rely in the fundamentals of creed—a proof which, as you maintain, has no equal in its field—is your statement (2):

“If He were receptive (3) to contingent events, He would never be rid of them, because (4) of what was previously established concerning substances: we have judged it impossible for a substance to be stripped of accidents. Whatever is never free of contingent events cannot have preceded them, and this necessarily entails judging the Maker to be originated (5).”

It is therefore said to you: Your phrase “because of what was previously established” refers back to earlier discussion, yet you have nowhere established that whatever receives a thing can never be without it, nor that every substance which has received an accident must forever remain bound to it (6), nor that it is impossible for substances (7) to be entirely devoid of accidents. Such a conclusion would in fact require two premises:

First: that every genus of accidents can inhere in every substance.

Second: that whatever is receptive to something (8) cannot be free of it or of its opposite.

You have offered no proof for either premise. At most you affirmed the so-called modes (akwān), which are no more than combination and separation, and you alleged that the Muʿtazilites contradict themselves by distinguishing between the state before attribution and the state after it. Thus, when they allow a substance to be devoid of some contingent events while still receptive to them (9), any attempt to prove that contingent events cannot inhere in the Essence of Allah collapses, and no argument remains to demonstrate the impossibility of the Exalted Creator accepting contingent events. Hence, apart from highlighting the Muʿtazilites’ inconsistency and their lack of evidence, this discourse