and the earth in six days, and that Allah is the Creator of all things. Yet they may fail to reconcile this with the Creator’s perpetual activity. They have not, however, grounded their position in affirming acts that subsist in Him and occur by His power and will. They consequently remain caught between the position of the eternalist philosophers, who maintain that the celestial spheres are eternal—with their veneration for Aristotle and his followers, such as Ibn Sīnā—and the position of the speculative theologians, who maintain that the succession of originated events is finite. They may favor one position at one time and the other at another, until matters come to seem to them as though the religion of the Muslims and that of the godless were equal in ignorance. At times, they may even incline toward the religion of the godless, to the point of writing works on polytheism and magic, such as the worship of celestial bodies and idols.
The root of this is their denial of what must be affirmed concerning the Lord’s acts, exalted is He, as indicated by both transmitted revelation and reason. These thinkers may establish that those who deny that acts subject to His choice subsist in Allah’s essence—calling this the denial that originated events inhere in Him—have no sound argument for doing so, whether rational or scriptural. Indeed, those from every school who deny this are themselves bound to affirm it.
If, then, this principle is so firmly grounded in reason, so inescapably binding on the various schools, and so strongly supported by revelation; and if rejecting it entails preferring the position of the godless, which is false according to revelation and reason, over the teachings of the messengers, which are established by revelation and reason, or entails Muslims placing the people of faith and the people of godlessness on an equal footing—then the misguidance and corruption resulting from its denial become clear.
This is borne out, for example, by al-Rāzī: when he argues in works such as Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl (The Utmost Limits of Reason)