It may then be said:

The Dahriyya (eternalists) claim that the movements of the celestial sphere have neither a beginning nor an end. They assign them no final point at which they cease, so they cannot validly rely on these events being finite in one direction. Rather, their position necessarily entails that the celestial movements they claim have always existed and will always continue are unequal in number. According to them, Saturn’s revolutions have always occurred and will always continue, as have those of the sun and moon. Yet the moon’s revolutions are twelve times as numerous as the sun’s, and the sun’s revolutions are thirty times as numerous as Saturn’s. Each of these series is therefore infinite in both the past and the future, while one is smaller than another by a finite amount, and another is greater by a finite amount. Thus, if the smaller series is finite, it follows that each of the series of revolutions is finite.

This argument does not apply to those leading scholars of Islam and adherents of other religious communities who hold that an infinite succession of events is possible. They maintain that the movement of the celestial sphere has both a beginning and an end, and that the sphere itself originated and was created, coming into existence after not having existed. They also maintain that it will split and be rent asunder, bringing the movements of the sun and moon to an end. In their view, every revolution of the celestial sphere and of its heavenly bodies, sun, and moon has a beginning and an end.

This proof establishes only that the movement of the celestial sphere cannot be infinite. The necessary finitude of the movement of a particular body does not entail the necessary finitude of events as a class, unless the proof establishing the finitude of that particular body’s movement also establishes