the philosophers, except through what they all maintain: that an agent endowed with power and free choice gives preference to one of two equal alternatives without a determining factor, or that the eternal will gives preference to one of two equal alternatives without a determining factor.

Those among the scholars of hadith, theology, and philosophy who dispute this say that it denies a self-evident truth and undermines the very argument by which they established the existence of the Creator. For they established His existence on the grounds that giving preference to one of two equal alternatives requires a determining factor. What people have said on this matter is well known.

[Refuting the philosophers on the alleged impossibility of temporal events subsisting in His essence, exalted is He, from several perspectives]

We shall now present the answers that may be given to the philosophers on behalf of all religious communities, from several perspectives.

The First Perspective

It may be said: Temporal events must either be finite, or they need not be finite and may instead be without limit. If they must be finite, it follows that temporal events must have a beginning and that they may arise without a temporally originated cause. Your argument is then invalid, as is your claim that the motions of the celestial spheres are perpetual and beginningless. If, however, temporal events may continue perpetually, then every temporal event is preceded by another. In that case, if the celestial spheres came into being, another temporal event must have preceded them. Those successive acts of will subsisting in the essence of the necessarily existent Being, or other temporal events, could therefore be the condition for the celestial spheres to come into being—just as you yourselves say that every temporal event is conditional upon a preceding temporal event.

If they say, “Temporal events do not subsist in His essence,”