It thus becomes clear that Abd al-Azīz al-Kinānī affirms that what is related to Allah’s will and power subsists in His essence, and that he does not regard each individual instance as eternal, even though the kind may be eternal. For when Bishr said to him, “He brought them into being through His power, which has always existed,” he asked:

“Do you not say that He has always had power?”

“Yes,” Bishr replied.

“Then do you say that He has always been acting?”

“No,” he replied.

“Then you must necessarily say that He created through the act performed through His power.”

This is because, if He has always had power, while no created thing existed, and then a created thing came into existence, it did not come into existence through power without an act. If power alone were sufficient for its existence without an act, the created thing would necessarily have existed eternally alongside that eternal power.

This is the familiar question: can things come into existence without a cause that itself comes into existence, or not? The majority of rational thinkers hold that the impossibility of this is self-evident, and that it would entail favoring one alternative over another without a determining factor. This is the argument presented by Abd al-Azīz.

It differs from the view that the possessor of power himself favors one of the two alternatives within his power without a determining factor—as most of the Muʿtazilah and Jahmiyyah maintain—or merely through an eternal will, as the Kullābiyyah and Karrāmiyyah maintain. This latter position is what Bishr presented.