would all coexist in beginningless eternity, with none of the existent things accompanying them; otherwise, what precedes would coexist with what it precedes. Thus, the existent things, taken together, have a beginning.”

Al-Urmawī said:

“One may say: If by their coexistence you mean that they all obtain together at some moment, this is not conceded. For no moment can be posited without one of them ending at that moment because the motion whose nonexistence it is comes into existence. This necessarily follows from those motions succeeding one another without a beginning. If, however, you mean that there is no ordering among the beginnings of those states of nonexistence, as there is among the beginnings of existent things, then some existent things coexisting with them does not entail the absurdity in question.”

I say:

The substance of this is that the nonexistence of each motion ends when that motion comes into existence. These states of nonexistence therefore do not all have the same endpoint, and so they do not all coexist at any time. At every moment, some obtain while others do not, because something comes into existence and thereby ends its nonexistence. Yet none of these states of nonexistence has a beginning, since whatever comes into existence was always nonexistent before it came into existence. Motions, by contrast, each have a beginning. Accordingly, nothing prevents existence from coexisting with some of these states of nonexistence but not others, just as that which has enduring, beginningless existence coexists with the nonexistence of everything else.

The proponent of the argument therefore says:

The nonexistence of each thing that comes into being is established in beginningless eternity.