The purpose is to draw attention to what has been stated by those—among the people of Islam and the Sunnah, the philosophers, and others—who dispute Abū al-Husayn and others who maintain that the genus of events cannot continue perpetually.
Likewise, regarding his statement:
“Each one was preceded by nonexistence. Thus, if they had no beginning, the past would never have been free of their existence and nonexistence, nor would what precedes be distinct from the genus of what is preceded.”
They say in response:
“Each one is preceded by its own nonexistence, not by the nonexistence of its genus. If the genus has no beginning, it does not follow that its nonexistence accompanies it. Rather, each individual instance coexists with the nonexistence of another.”
They acknowledge the nonexistence of each individual instance, just as they acknowledge its coming into being, since its coming into being entails its prior nonexistence.
They dispute, however, the nonexistence of the genus, its having an endpoint, and the impossibility of its continuing perpetually into the past, just as they dispute its having an endpoint and the impossibility of its continuing perpetually into the future.
[Abū al-Husayn al-Basrī’s discussion in Ghurar al-adilla and Ibn Taymiyyah’s commentary on it]
In short, this issue is among the most fundamental principles underlying the argument of the Muʿtazilah, the Jahmiyyah, and those who agree with them that bodies came into being.
Upon it also depend the questions of Allah’s speech and action, His creation of the heavens and the earth, then His rising over the Throne, and His speaking the Quran and other words.
The leading scholars of hadith and the Sunnah, various groups of speculative thinkers and theologians, and the leading philosophers dispute their position on this.
They and the eternalist philosophers shared a premise from which their respective doctrines branched out: that an infinite succession of events and their perpetual continuation entail the eternity of the world—indeed, the eternity of the heavens and the celestial spheres.
Both groups therefore said: If one posits event after event without end, the world would be eternal, and hence the celestial spheres would be eternal.