for a determining factor may act by choice or otherwise. Thus, if the determining factor is assumed to be something that necessarily entails that magnitude—whether something inherent in the body or something separate from it—then there is a determining factor for that magnitude.
The discussion of this will be completed, Allah Most High willing, when we present al-Āmidī’s objections to it.
[Al-Rāzī’s Third Proof]
Al-Rāzī said:
“The third proof: If a body were beginningless, it would have occupied a particular spatial location from eternity, since everything that can be perceptibly pointed to as being here or there must be so situated. That which is beginningless cannot cease to be, as explained earlier. Movement would therefore be impossible for it, yet the possibility of its movement has been established.”
[Al-Urmawī’s Objection]
Al-Urmawī said:
“One may say: ‘Beginningless’ means continuously existing without a beginning. Thus, our statement, ‘If a body were beginningless, it would have occupied a particular spatial location from eternity,’ would mean that, if a body had existed continuously without a beginning, its occupancy of one particular spatial location would likewise have continued without a beginning. This is what being at rest means.
“This, however, is not conceded. Rather, it would always occupy a particular place, whether one and the same place or successive places—that is, at each moment it would occupy a particular spatial location different from the one it occupied before.”
End of quotation.
[Ibn Taymiyyah’s Comment]
I say:
The substance of this objection is that something which can be pointed to as being here or there does not necessarily occupy a particular spatial location from which it cannot move. At most, one can say that it must occupy a spatial location—not that this must be one and the same location at all times. If it necessarily requires a spatial location of some kind, rather than one particular location, it may occupy this location at one time and another location at another time.