he means the first, this is false, for there is nothing outside existing things that encloses them, whether they are said to be finite or infinite. If, however, it is said that each member of an infinite series of existing things exists, this is true.

If someone calls this being bounded, that is merely a choice of terminology. His statement, “What is infinite cannot be bounded,” would then amount to saying, “It cannot exist.” But this is precisely the point in dispute: he has merely changed the wording and begged the question.

Furthermore, what is infinite in the future exists according to the agreement of the adherents of the religious traditions and philosophers generally. Only a few dissenters have disputed this, such as al-Jahm, Abū al-Hudhayl, and others like them, whose dissent was preceded by the consensus of the Muslims, who are refuted by the Quran and Sunnah and defeated by rational proofs, and who oppose the vast majority of rational people, both earlier and later. Yet this is bounded by existence, just as what is infinite in the past is bounded by existence. They distinguish between the two, however, by saying that the past has entered into existence, whereas the future has not.

Their opponents say: The past entered into existence and then ceased to exist, so both are nonexistent; the future has not entered into existence. This is merely a formal distinction: its substance is that the past existed and occurred, while the future has not yet occurred.

They may therefore be asked: Why do you claim that whatever has occurred and existed cannot have continued perpetually without a beginning? Although the past is finite on the side nearest to us, the future is also finite on this side. The discussion concerns only the other two endpoints.

Moreover, past events ceased to exist after having existed, so they are now nonexistent, just as future events are now nonexistent. Thus, the former does not exist,