Moreover, these deniers say:

“The Lord Most High was not able to act, then became able; action was impossible, then became possible, without anything new occurring at all to bring about this ability or possibility.”

This is what is meant by saying that something must change from being intrinsically impossible to being intrinsically possible. Reason decisively judges this to be false. Moreover, it entails attributing incapacity to Allah and claiming that He acquires an ability He did not previously possess, without any cause.

Those among them who offer a defense of this—as many of them do—say:

“What is impossible is the ability to act in beginningless eternity. Thus, the very absence of beginningless eternity makes action possible and brings about the ability to perform it.”

They are told in reply:

Beginningless eternity is not something that existed and then ceased to exist, nor something nonexistent that then came into existence, such that one could say that something new occurred to bring this about. Rather, beginningless eternity is like endless eternity: just as endless eternity is perpetuity into the future, beginningless eternity is perpetuity into the past. Just as endless eternity is not confined to one time rather than another, neither is beginningless eternity.

That which is beginningless has always existed; that which is endless will always exist. To say that He has always existed and will always exist means that His existence endures and remains, without beginning or end. Thus, saying, “His power is conditional upon the absence of beginningless eternity,” is like saying, “His power is conditional upon the absence of endless eternity.”

If, then, the early generations of the Muslim community, its leading scholars, and the great majority of the various groups rejected Jahm’s view concerning