in itself has no event subsisting in it due to a cause distinct from it, just as he cannot deny the existence of two beings, each necessarily existent in itself and dependent upon the other.

For what these philosophers are really saying is that the celestial sphere and the First Cause each need the other as something conditioned needs its condition, not as a created thing needs its creator.

[The Fifth Argument]

It may be said:

Your argument concerning events, even at its strongest, is undermined by newly arising things such as relations and states of nonexistence, for they concede that these arise.

This argument applies to these just as it applies to those. Whatever answer you give concerning these, your opponents can give concerning those.

For it may be said:

When those relations and states of nonexistence arise anew, they must have a newly arising cause. That cause is either the essence itself or something external to it.

If the first is the case, relations and states of nonexistence must persist perpetually. If the second is the case, circular dependence or an infinite regress follows. If the third is the case, the external thing that causes those relations and states of nonexistence to arise anew must be necessarily existent.

As for the objections that Abū al-Hasan al-Āmidī reports they raised against this argument, they are weak, as he explains, and they can be answered in the manner he also mentions.

As for the statement:

“One who intends something to occur in a substrate requires that the substrate be in a direction.”

If he means something that one intends to occur in a substrate distinct from oneself, then the Karrāmiyyah