Abū al-Qāsim al-Ansārī—the teacher of al-Shahrastānī and a pupil of Abū al-Ma‘ālī—said in his commentary on al-Irshād:

“The strongest argument to invoke in this question is the opponents’ inconsistency.”

[Al-Juwaynī’s Statements on Allah’s Acts and Ibn Taymiyyah’s Response]

It is indeed as he said, for he found no sound approach among his predecessors on this question, whether rational or scriptural.

Consider this in light of what Abū al-Ma‘ālī wrote in his book entitled al-Irshād ilā qawāti‘ al-adillah (Guidance to Decisive Proofs), in which he included the principal arguments of speculative theology employed by those who share his views. He discussed this principle in two places in his book.

The first is in the discussion of the world’s coming into existence. There he employed the well-known argument from accidents: a body cannot be devoid of accidents, and whatever cannot be devoid of them must have come into existence. This is the argument on which the Mu‘tazilah relied before him, and which al-Ash‘arī condemned in his Epistle to the People of the Frontier, explaining that it is not among the methods of the prophets and their followers.

The argument rests on establishing four premises: the existence of accidents, their coming into existence, the impossibility of a body being devoid of them, and ruling out a beginningless succession of events. When he reached the third premise, he said:

“As for the third principle—