and arriving, descending, calling out, speaking privately, and similar matters concerning which people have disputed whether they may subsist in that which is beginningless.

The majority of the people of the Sunnah and hadith who follow the early generations, the leading scholars of the early and later generations, many groups of speculative theologians, and most philosophers regard it as possible for acts and other things connected with His will and power to subsist in the Beginningless One.

They therefore say: The statement, “If that which is beginningless possesses a certain attribute, it cannot cease to possess it,” is undisputed if it refers to matters on which there is consensus, such as the attributes of perfection inseparable from Allah’s essence, or the kind of attributes inseparable from the essence of Allah Most High.

If, however, it refers to individual temporally originated events, what proof is there that, when a state other than these particular states subsists in that which is beginningless, it cannot cease to possess it?

As for the argument advanced in the words, “It must be as it is in its beginninglessness either by virtue of itself or because of a cause,” and the remainder of the argument, you are to be asked: Is that condition in which it subsists a property of some kind? If you posit something else as necessitating that property—in accordance with those who affirm states and say that its being knowing and moving is a property necessitated by knowledge and motion—then you are to be addressed using this terminology and told: “That subsists in it by virtue of a property.”

He says: “If it is by virtue of a property, it cannot cease except when that property ceases to exist; and that which is beginningless cannot cease to exist.”

He is told: The statement, “That which is beginningless cannot cease to exist,” is ambiguous. Do you mean