requires that it be preceded by something else.” For this may be understood to mean that its essence requires it to be preceded by something other than motion. If that were so, something preceded by something else could not be beginningless. Yet he can only mean the latter: that its essence requires some of its parts to precede others. In that case, they have challenged his second premise, namely their assertion:

“The essence of beginninglessness excludes this.”

They said:

We do not concede that something of this kind cannot be beginningless; indeed, this is the very point at issue. This is especially so since he—along with the vast majority of Muslims and adherents of other religions—concedes that something of this kind can continue forever.

It is well known that the essence of motion requires some of its parts to come after others, yet this does not preclude the existence of motions that never end.

They said:

Likewise, the existence of motions with no beginning is not impossible, just as it is not impossible for there to exist One whose existence has no beginning—the Eternal, necessarily existent Being—while motions and times with no beginning can be hypothetically posited as accompanying His existence. The question of an endpoint for what actually exists is the same as that of an endpoint for what is hypothetically posited.

[The second argument and commentary on it]

Al-Rāzī said:

The second argument: “If the revolutions of the celestial sphere succeeded one another without a beginning, each motion would be preceded by a state of nonexistence with no beginning, and those states of nonexistence