they may be told:

“Then your proof that a beginningless being cannot be at rest is of the same kind as your proof that it cannot be in motion: namely, the finitude of temporal occurrences. This has already been discussed.”

If they say:

“Rest is an existent reality. If it is beginningless, it cannot cease to exist, because whatever is necessarily beginningless cannot cease to exist. For whatever is beginningless must either be necessary in itself or be among the inseparable concomitants of that which is necessary in itself,”

they may be told:

“This is like saying: the absence of action is refraining from it, and refraining from action is an existent reality. If it is beginningless, it cannot cease to exist, because whatever is necessarily beginningless cannot cease to exist.”

If they say, “The absence of action is not an existent act of refraining,” one may likewise say: “The absence of motion is not an existent state of rest.”

Al-Āmidī and others have judged this argument—the argument from motion and rest—to be weak. From this standpoint, it is invalid on the principles of those who hold that accidents do not persist for two successive instants. Originally, it was one of the arguments of the Muʿtazilah, who hold that accidents can persist.

But their opponents among the Hishāmiyyah, the Karrāmiyyah, and others include those who affirm a beginningless body and hold that acts came to subsist in it that had not previously subsisted in it—whether they call this motion, as some acknowledge, or decline to call it motion, as others do. For what matters is the intelligible meanings, not the verbal designations.