He said:

“Some have argued: if temporal occurrences subsisted in Him, He would undergo change, which is impossible.”

He said:

“This is weak, because if change is understood to mean temporal occurrences subsisting in Him, the consequent and the antecedent would be identical. If it is understood to mean something else, the conditional proposition cannot be established.”

He said:

“As for the Muʿtazila, most of them have argued that an attribute’s subsisting in its subject means its presence in a spatial region, consequent upon its subject’s presence there. The Creator, exalted is He, is not in a spatial direction; hence no attribute can subsist in Him.”

He said:

“You already know the weakness of this approach.”

He said:

“Their leading scholars have argued that temporally originated qualities can subsist in a substance only because it occupies space. Their evidence is that, since an accident does not occupy space, these qualities cannot subsist in it.”

He said:

“This is invalid, for one might say that temporal occurrences can subsist in a substance not because it occupies space, but because of some other characteristic shared by the substance and the Creator, exalted is He, but not shared by the substance and an accident.

“Even if we concede that, it remains possible that a substance receives temporal occurrences because it occupies space, while Allah, exalted is He, receives them by virtue of another characteristic, since identical outcomes may be explained by different causes.”

He said:

“They have also argued that, if one temporal occurrence could subsist in Him, every temporal occurrence could subsist in Him.”

He said:

“This is a claim for which no proof can be established.”