been mentioned by al-Marīsī. Nor did ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz commit himself to any of these propositions. He maintained only that the act is an attribute of Allah Most High, that Allah has power to perform it, and that nothing prevents Him from doing so. His argument achieves its intended purpose.

His statement in the other version—if it is authentically attributed to him—

“All I said was that the agent has always been one who will act, and the Creator one who will create”

rules out the act itself being beginningless, let alone the thing produced being beginningless.

His statement,

“The act is an attribute of Allah; Allah has power to perform it, and nothing prevents Him from doing so,”

rules out the beginninglessness of any particular act, but not the beginninglessness of the class of acts, unless the impossibility of an infinite succession of effects is established. His words address neither the denial nor the affirmation of this.

His statement,

“He has always been one who will act,”

if authentically attributed to him, admits two meanings. The first is that He has always been described as one who will do whatever He does, encompassing all things produced, both their individual instances and their kinds. This is the position of those who hold that the class of acts subsisting in Him had a beginning, just as others hold that the kinds of things separate from Him had a beginning.

The second is that the agent has always been one who will act, doing one thing after another, and thus precedes every individual thing produced.

On the first interpretation, none of their kinds or individual instances can be beginningless; on the