event that is not necessarily described as both past and future: it is described as past in relation to what follows it, and as future in relation to what precedes it. When any particular event is considered, what precedes it is past and what follows it is future. The same applies to every event.

Since every event in a perpetual succession can be described as both past and future, this provides no valid basis for distinguishing between the two. A valid distinction requires that the distinguishing feature be exclusive to one of the two categories and affect the judgment on the basis of which they are distinguished. Neither condition is met here.

The argument against a perpetual succession of events applies equally to both cases. Thus, either both must stand or both must fall.

This is why those who applied this argument consistently—the two leading speculative theologians who denied the divine attributes, Jahm ibn Safwān, the leader of the Jahmiyyah, and Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf, the leader of the Muʿtazilah—both rule out a perpetual succession of events in the future, just as they do for the past.

If someone says:

“What is impossible is for infinitely many individual things to enter existence successively,”

he is answered:

“Future events will enter existence, and their individual occurrences will succeed one another without end. They have simply not yet entered existence, whereas past events entered existence and then passed out of it.”

His statement, “It is impossible for things within the power of the Creator, exalted is He, to enter existence in a quantity that no number can encompass and no span of time can account for,” is precisely the point at issue if he restricts it to the past. If, however, the wording is general in scope, it contradicts what he has conceded. Rather, these critics maintain that there must come