Abd al-Jabbār was to demonstrate the unsoundness of al-Ash'arī’s approach and vindicate his teachers’ method: first establishing that bodies have a beginning, and then establishing the One who brought them into being.

The matter is not as Abd al-Jabbār stated. Rather, al-Ash'arī deliberately turned away from the method followed by the Mu'tazila, despite being familiar with it, as he explained in his Epistle to the Frontier. He explained that it is an innovation forbidden by the revealed laws, which the early Muslims and the leading scholars did not follow. Instead, he argued from the coming into being of human attributes, since this is something observable and known, and the glorious Quran has indicated this approach and directed people to it.

However, when al-Ash'arī sought to establish that the sperm-drop has a beginning, he employed the Mu'tazila’s familiar method for establishing that bodies have a beginning. Although he agreed with them that this method was sound, he nevertheless maintained that it involved lengthy argument, doubts, and numerous disputed premises. It therefore need not be employed at the outset, nor does knowledge of Allah Most High or faith in Him depend upon it. By contrast, the sperm-drop’s transformation from one state to another is clearer and more evident than the claim that every body necessarily has accidents distinct from it, and that accidents, as a kind, have a beginning.

Furthermore, anyone seeking to establish that bodies have a beginning on the grounds that they are never devoid of motion or rest—as some of the Mu'tazila and those who agreed with them have done—has an easier task