creates such-and-such, this would be impossible, because it precludes the Creator’s existence altogether until His causal agency is complete, while its completion depends on yet another completion. It follows that His agency as Creator could never be complete, and hence that He could never create anything at all.

Once it is known that He creates nothing except by “Be,” then if “Be” were created by another “Be,” and so on indefinitely, each of these would be that by which He becomes a creator. Yet none of them would come into existence, making it impossible for Him to become a creator.

This differs from saying: He creates this by “Be,” and that, before or after it, by “Be,” and so on. This entails that the second comes into existence only after the first has come into existence. What depends on a condition here is His performance of this particular act, not action as such. Thus, there is a well-known dispute concerning this case, unlike the first.

It is well known that rational proofs do not establish the beginningless existence of anything in the world. At most, they establish perpetual agency and the impossibility of His becoming an agent after not having been one.

If they say, “An infinite regress is impossible,” and mean a succession of effects, with one thing coming into existence after another, this contradicts their own position, and they have offered no proof of its impossibility.

If they mean the specific regress concerning the completeness of an agent’s agency, then it is conceded that this is impossible. But its impossibility does not establish His performance of any particular act, only action as such. This does not help them; rather, it undermines their position.

[The second argument]

It may be said: An infinite regress concerning agency as such does not help them. It only refutes the position of the Jahmiyyah and the Qadariyyah. As for an infinite regress of particular acts, if it is possible, their appeal to it is invalid; indeed, their argument collapses. But if it is impossible,