and nonexistence, can only be temporally originated, not eternal and beginningless, and that whatever is eternal and beginningless can only be an absolutely necessary existent whose nonexistence is impossible.

This view is false. Even supposing it were correct, it could be established only with difficulty and subtle reasoning.

It is well known that knowledge of the necessary existent—the Maker of contingent things—does not depend on knowing that an eternal, beginningless being whose nonexistence is impossible may nevertheless be contingent, admitting existence and nonexistence.

Yet they say:
“If we establish a beginningless being, we must then establish that it is necessarily existent rather than contingently existent, since a beginningless being admits either possibility.”

This is the approach al-Rāzī relied upon in most of his books, including al-Arba'īn, Nihāyat al-'Uqūl, al-Matālib al-'Āliya, and others.

Thus, when these thinkers are asked to establish the necessary existent—which, in their classification, is the counterpart of the contingent, while the contingent encompasses both the beginningless and the temporally originated—they can establish this necessary existent only by establishing a contingent being that admits existence and nonexistence.

They can establish this only by establishing something temporally originated, which exists at one time and does not exist at another.

The existence of something temporally originated entails the existence of something beginningless. Yet, in his view, a beginningless being need not be necessarily existent; it may instead be contingently existent.

Thus, they have established neither the necessary existent nor the contingent existent through which the necessary existent they claim is established.

Then, even supposing that they have established a necessary existent, they have not acknowledged that it is one and that it is