bodies without a newly occurring cause—it follows that the occurrence of newly arising things does not depend on a newly occurring cause. Rather, the agent who acts by choice brings into being whatever he brings into being without any newly occurring cause at all, as is maintained by those among the Mu'tazilah and those who agree with them who hold this view.

Their opponents among the Hishāmiyyah, the Karrāmiyyah, and others then say to them:

“Thus, it is possible for the eternal, beginningless body to move after having been at rest, without any cause necessitating this, but solely through will and power. For an agent possessing power and choice can give preference to either of two possible alternatives without a determining factor: he prefers rest at one time and motion at another.”

If they say:

“We maintain that it acts after not having acted. If you say that rest is an existent reality, you make it an agent acting from eternity to produce an existent reality. Yet acting from eternity is impossible.”

They reply:

“We have no interest in making rest an existent reality, or in making it an agent acting from eternity to produce an existent reality. Rather, we and you agree that it performs an act it had not previously performed, without any newly occurring cause. Our dispute, however, concerns the act—does it subsist in the agent?—and the agent—is it a body? If you demand of us a cause for its producing motion after rest, we say to you: This is just like its producing any newly occurring thing after not having acted. The difference concerns only the locus of the act, not its cause