the world from the temporal origination of bodies, and argued for the temporal origination of bodies on the grounds that they necessarily have accidents, such as motion, rest, conjunction, and separation. They then said:

“Accidents, or some accidents, are temporally originated, and whatever is never devoid of temporally originated events is itself temporally originated.”

This method therefore required them first to establish the existence of accidents, and then to establish that bodies necessarily have them.

Some claimed that a body necessarily has every kind of accident, and that whatever can receive a property cannot be devoid of both that property and its opposite. They claimed that every body has a taste, a colour, and an odour, and that no accident persists for two successive moments. Such was the claim of the attribute-affirming theologians who adopted this method but denied voluntary acts subsisting in Allah’s essence, such as Judge Abū Bakr, Abū al-Maʿālī, and others like them, as well as those who sometimes agreed with them, such as Judge Abū Yaʿlā and others. Their claim that no accident persists for two successive moments entailed that accidents come into existence one after another. Since a body is never devoid of them, it would itself be temporally originated, on the premise that a beginningless succession of temporally originated events is impossible.

Many of them relied on this method to establish the temporal origination of the world, including, among their later scholars, Abū al-Hasan al-Āmidī and others.

Most rational people, however, rejected this and said:

“It is known that a body is sometimes in motion and sometimes at rest.”

As to whether rest is something existent or an absence, there are two views.

As for conjunction and separation, the argument rests on affirming the existence of the indivisible atom.