temporally originated, such a supposition is impossible according to the vast majority of rational people.

Most philosophers among the followers of Aristotle and others agree with the majority that contingency is conceivable only in temporally originated things. By contrast, Ibn Sīnā and those who agreed with him claimed the existence of a beginningless contingent thing. Consequently, their attempts to establish this kind of contingency raised questions to which they had no answer.

[Al-Rāzī’s agreement with Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd’s criticism of Ibn Sīnā]

Since al-Rāzī affirmed this kind of contingency in agreement with Ibn Sīnā, his discussions exhibited the inconsistencies well known from his longer and shorter works. Yet all these thinkers affirm in their works on logic, in agreement with their predecessors—Aristotle and others—that a contingent thing which admits of existence and nonexistence can only be temporally originated, coming into being after not having existed.

Abū al-Walīd Ibn Rushd, the grandson, mentioned this and said:

“What Ibn Sīnā and others like him maintained—that a thing can be contingent, admitting of existence and nonexistence, while being beginningless and eternal—is a view that no philosopher before Ibn Sīnā expressed.”

I say:

Ibn Sīnā himself also stated in more than one place that a contingent thing which admits of existence and nonexistence can only be temporally originated, preceded by nonexistence, as his predecessors and all other rational people maintained. I have quoted his words from al-Shifā (The Healing) and other works in another