As for life and death, some speculative thinkers may dispute his claim. For Muslim speculative thinkers and others disagree about death: is it something existent or merely an absence? Many who hold that it is an absence say that life and death stand in the opposition of privation and possession. Whatever is not susceptible to life and death, such as inanimate matter, is described as neither.

But al-Qādī and most people respond to them: “This is a terminological convention of yours, which is not binding upon us.” They say: “We define death in a way that makes the dispute merely verbal.” Al-Qādī and most people also say that every body is susceptible to life.

But what should be said to him is this: a body must be either living or dead, just as it must be either moving or at rest. Yet its possessing life does not entail that it can possess death. For the Eternal One, glorified is He, possesses life, knowledge, and power, and cannot possess their opposites. Thus, it cannot be said that every body is susceptible to life and death without evidence establishing this. Life need not be originated, whether as a kind or as an individual instance, just as the same may be said of motion.

[Continuation of al-Bāqillānī’s discourse and Ibn Taymiyyah’s commentary on it]

Then al-Qādī Abū Bakr said:

“If someone asks: ‘What is the proof that [whatever] did not precede originated things is itself originated, and that a body must necessarily be judged to have originated if it did not exist before the first originated events? Why have you claimed this?’