This follows precisely because events cannot arise from a beginningless complete cause: the effect of such a cause cannot lag behind it, whereas the cause of anything newly brought into being must be complete when it comes into being.

They affirm both propositions. Together, these entail that the Necessary Existent has brought none of these events into being, and that events have no originator.

Their position also entails an infinite number of causes and effects, and an infinite number of agents. They themselves, along with all other rational people, know that all this is untenable. Their only escape is to affirm that voluntary acts within the Necessary Existent’s power subsist in Him, and that attributes subsist in Him.

If they affirm this, their denial of the attributes and their claim that the celestial spheres must be beginningless are invalidated.

It is thus clear that the sound arguments they have presented for the Lord’s perpetual agency and the perpetual occurrence of events establish the opposite of their position concerning the acts and attributes of the Lord Most High, and contradict their position concerning the world’s beginninglessness and the unity of the Necessary Existent. This is what was to be established. Matters relating to this discussion have been treated at length elsewhere.

The purpose here is to point out that all unimpeachable rational arguments advanced by any group of people support agreement with the revealed Books and the Sunnah, and refute the contrary positions of the adherents of innovation, whether theologians or philosophers. Allah, Glorified is He, knows best.

What further clarifies this is that the central premise of the preceding argument for His perpetual agency is of the same kind as the preceding argument advanced by those who denied that acts could newly occur and subsist in Him. They said:

“For any attribute posited for the Necessary Existent, His essence is sufficient for its presence or its absence,