Some of these scholars hold that this kind of act has a temporal beginning, as the Karrāmīs maintain. Most hadith scholars and those who agree with them, however, regard the kind as eternal rather than temporally originated. They distinguish between the temporal origination of a kind and that of an individual instance, just as most rational people distinguish between the perpetuity of a kind and that of any particular instance. The bliss of the people of Paradise continues perpetually in kind, but not every individual, perishable thing continues forever. Some things that come into existence never perish thereafter, such as human souls: they are newly created, coming to exist after not having existed, yet they remain and endure forever.

The philosophers likewise admit that a kind can endure perpetually without its individual instances doing so. The eternalists among them, however, supposed that the movements of the celestial spheres belong to this category and are eternal in kind. They therefore believed these movements to be eternal, although they have no evidence whatsoever for this. Most of their arguments merely refute the position of those who do not distinguish between the temporal origination of a kind and that of an individual instance, and who say that the temporal origination of individual things necessarily entails that of their kind, and that all of this came into existence without any newly arising event.

If this position is refuted, its refutation provides an even stronger argument against the eternalists, demonstrating the invalidity of their position and the truth of what the Book and the Sunnah teach, as explained previously. If it is not refuted, their position is invalid.