[Al-Āmidī’s third argument for the impossibility of newly arising things inhering in the essence of Allah Most High]

Al-Āmidī stated the third argument as follows:

If He were receptive to newly arising things inhering in His essence, He would have been receptive to them from eternity. Otherwise, receptivity would supervene upon His essence and require a further receptivity, resulting in an impossible infinite regress. A thing’s receptivity to something presupposes the possibility of the received thing’s existence and thus requires that both be realized. This entails the possibility of newly arising things coming into existence from eternity. Yet something newly arising cannot come into existence from eternity, because being eternal contradicts being newly arisen.

Al-Āmidī said: An objector might say: We do not concede that, if He were receptive to newly arising things inhering in His essence, He would have been receptive to them from eternity. Receptivity to something newly arising in the future, when its existence is possible, does not entail receptivity to it from eternity, when its existence is not possible. And the claim that this entails an infinite regress would apply equally to bringing into existence