in a discussion of his, which al-Rāzī and others have transmitted. We have discussed it and demonstrated its invalidity in a passage to come, Allah willing.

Al-Āmidī said:

“The remaining arguments are those we mentioned concerning the impossibility of infinitely many temporal events when establishing the Necessary Existent. Since they have already been mentioned, there is no need to repeat them.”

Earlier, he had presented four approaches to establishing the impossibility of an infinite series, rejected them, and chosen a fifth.

The first is the argument by one-to-one correspondence, which consists in positing a totality: “If what precedes it has no end, then suppose we make a finite addition to the posited totality—let the addition be ten, for example. The original totality must then be either equal to itself with the supposed addition, greater, or smaller.

“To assert equality or greater size is impossible, for a thing together with something else cannot be equal to that same thing without the other, nor greater.

“If the first totality is smaller than the second, it is evident that the difference between them is only a finite amount, and in that case