will and speech, expresses their doctrine in his own words. They themselves do not describe anything that subsists in the Lord’s essence as either created or newly brought into being; they merely call it newly occurring. Nor do they say that His will and speech are neither created nor newly brought into being.

[Continuation of al-Āmidī’s discussion and Ibn Taymiyyah’s commentary on it]

He said: “The adherents of the truth have advanced weak arguments to establish that newly occurring things cannot subsist in Him.

“The first: They said, ‘If the Creator Most High were receptive to newly occurring things subsisting in His essence, He would never be free of them or their opposites. And the opposite of a newly occurring thing—. Whatever is never free of newly occurring things must itself be newly occurring, whereas the Lord Most High is not newly occurring.’”

He said: “This argument rests on five premises: first, every newly occurring attribute must have an opposite; second, the opposite of a newly occurring attribute must itself be newly occurring; third, whatever admits a newly occurring thing cannot be free of both it and its opposite; fourth, whatever is never free of newly occurring things is itself newly occurring; and fifth, that origination