If, then, it is said that causal action has operated without beginning upon one thing after another, each effect would have come into being, and it would follow that everything other than Allah comes into being, even though each thing that comes into being is preceded by another.

If, instead, it is said that the effect follows the beginningless causal action after an interval, it would follow that things can come into being through beginningless causal action, as many speculative thinkers maintain. This is the position of those who affirm attributes of action for Allah Most High—namely, the attribute of creating—and maintain that this attribute is beginningless. It is held by groups of jurists among the followers of Abū Hanīfa, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ahmad, as well as by Sufis, speculative theologians, and others.

If causal action is itself brought into being, it must have one who brings it into being. If it is held that things can come into being through a beginningless will, or that an agent possessing power and choice can give precedence to one of two possibilities within his power over the other without a determining factor, then causal action could come into being, subsisting in the agent, through his power, or through his power and beginningless will. This is just as some allow that created things distinct from Him can exist through His power alone, or through His power and beginningless will alone.

If it is said that things can come into being only through a cause that itself comes into being, then the causal action subsisting in the agent would itself be brought into being. If causal action is brought into being, it must have one who brings it into being; and bringing this causal action into being is itself causal action. An infinite succession of causal actions would therefore be possible. If it is possible, the argument is invalid. Its invalidity is thus evident on every supposition.

The author of al-Arbaʿīn (The Forty) and other speculative theologians like him failed to give a decisive answer to this argument only because one of its premises is that an infinite succession is impossible, and they hold this view. Yet those who advance the argument do not hold that an infinite succession is impossible, for the eternalists maintain an infinite succession of things that come into being. Thus, if they are answered