the proof. Alternatively, one may say: Whatever answer you give concerning that over which power is exercised also serves as our answer concerning what is received.

Or one may say: If this distinction is valid, the proof is invalid. If it is not valid, one of two things must follow: either the perpetual succession of things coming into existence is possible, or it is impossible. If the former follows, then things received, considered as a class, can exist from eternity, and the proof is invalid. If the latter follows, their existence from eternity is impossible. In that case, if one may say that He has power over them although the existence of what His power acts upon is impossible, one may also say that He is receptive to them although the existence of what is received is impossible.

As for al-Armawī’s statement, “If the distinction mentioned is valid, it dispenses with the preceding proof; otherwise, imperfection remains,” one might say that he intended the distinction between the beginninglessness of possibility and the possibility of beginningless existence. Or one might say that he meant the distinction between having power over something and being receptive to it.

If he intended the first, his words would mean: If the distinction is valid, He could be receptive to them from eternity, and their possibility could be beginningless—that is, they could always have been possible and feasible—while the beginningless existence of things that come into existence remains impossible. This accords with their assertion that things coming into existence have always been possible, feasible, and capable of existing, although an originated thing cannot be beginningless.

They also say: The feasibility and possibility of their occurrence are beginningless, because they cannot change from impossible to possible without a newly occurring cause, even though their existence from eternity and their being beginningless are impossible.

Al-Ghazālī mentioned this distinction in Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), as did al-Rāzī and others, in answering those who said that the possibility of the existence of things over which power is exercised has no origin. They said:

“We say that the possibility of things coming into existence has no beginning, and we say that a particular thing, on condition that it is