This, then, is an infinite regress in the completion of the effect upon the referent, whereas the other concerns causal efficacy as such. Both are impossible by the agreement of all rational people.

It is thus clear that their formidable arguments, which struck terror into the hearts of speculative thinkers, contain absolutely nothing proving that anything in the world is eternal.

Their assertion that something in the world—the celestial spheres or anything else—is eternal therefore has no proof whatsoever. Indeed, it is false, as has been explained elsewhere.

These arguments have indeed terrified the adherents of the innovated speculative theology newly introduced into Islam: the theology of the Jahmiyyah and Qadariyyah, and of those Ash‘arīs and Karrāmīs who followed their path, along with those versed in jurisprudence and others who followed or imitated them. The philosophers’ arguments merely invalidate the position of these people, who claimed that the Lord had always been inactive, neither acting by His will nor speaking by His will, and then acted or spoke by His will without anything new occurring.

The early generations of the Muslim community and its leading scholars agreed that this position is false.

Thus, they have no rational proof contradicting the texts of the revealed Books and the Sunnah, or even the position of the early generations and the leading scholars. This is what was to be established.

The distinction we have explained between an infinite regress in causal efficacy as such or in what completes it, and an infinite regress of effects, also makes clear the validity of the argument used by several leading scholars of the Sunnah, such as Sufyān ibn ‘Uyaynah, to establish that Allah’s speech is uncreated.

The explanation is as follows: if it is established that Allah created nothing except through “Be,” then, if “Be” were created, He would have to create it through another “Be,” and that second one through a third,