They answer what he has stated with the response already given: “This argument holds only against those speculative theologians who maintain that an infinite regress of effects is impossible. We, however, allow an infinite regress of effects, so temporal events may depend on preceding temporal events without any first event.”
This answer does not apply to the world as a whole, since, according to both groups, there is no temporal event preceding it on which it could depend.
Their answer really amounts to this: the infinite regress they ruled out in this argument is not an infinite succession of temporal events occurring one after another. The argument does not demonstrate the impossibility of such a succession, nor do they maintain that it is impossible. Rather, it demonstrates the impossibility of an infinite regress in what is required for the agent’s agency to be complete.
Those who affirm that He is an agent do not hold that His agency depends on anything other than Him, whether temporally originated or not. Thus, this consequence does not follow for them.
[Responses to their argument in several ways. The first response]
Their argument can be answered in several ways.
The first response
We have already presented decisive answers to this argument in several places, approaching it in a number of ways:
It may be said: If an infinite regress of effects is impossible, then temporal events must have a beginning. Their doctrine is therefore invalid, and so is the argument supporting it. If such a regress is possible, the argument is likewise invalid, since He may have always been an agent, without this being preceded by anything, even though everything other than Him is created and temporally originated.
This applies if the impossible regress means a regress in the very basis of agency. If, however, it means a regress of effects, the invalidity of the argument becomes evident.
[The second response]
It may be said: The most the argument establishes is that every temporal event must be preceded by another temporal event.
Now, the messengers have informed us that Allah created the heavens and the earth and what