and this is a universal claim. You then argued for it by citing the precedence accruing to what comes earlier, but this example does not establish the universal proposition.
Similar to this is their statement:
“That to which an utterance pertains acquires no existent attribute from that utterance. A thing gains no positive attribute merely by being mentioned or reported about, since even something nonexistent can be described as mentioned or reported about.”
This, too, is a claim supported by a particular example.
The correct analysis is that something to which an utterance pertains may acquire an existent attribute from it, as with an utterance that brings something into being, prohibits it, or makes it obligatory. It may also be as in the case of something about which a report is made.
Furthermore, an attribute accruing to a thing in relation to another may entail the existence of both distinct, mutually related things. This applies whether it is an intrinsic attribute necessarily involving a relation, such as will, power, and knowledge, or a relational attribute—according to those who allow a purely relational attribute that does not entail an intrinsic attribute. Examples include fatherhood and prophethood: the existence of either entails the existence of the other. The same applies to being above and below, and to being to the right and to the left. Likewise, there is no temporal interval between a complete cause and its known object, although, according to the majority of rational thinkers, the known object can only follow the cause in time, rather than exist at the same time as it. This has been explained at length elsewhere.
You yourselves have argued in more than one place that receptivity is a relation between the receptive subject and what it receives, and therefore cannot be actual unless both are actual. You included this among your arguments against the Karrāmiyyah concerning the inherence of temporally originated things. You said that His being receptive to temporal origination must be inseparable from His essence, and that this is possible only if temporally originated things actually exist in the eternal past, even though it is impossible for anything temporally originated to exist in the eternal past: