Seventh, we say: Every objection you advance to deny the temporal origination of this world rebounds upon you with regard to the origination of any event whatsoever. You claim, for example, that an agent must act for a purpose, and that if the influence were eternal the effect would necessarily be eternal as well, and the like. Your sophistry lies in the fact that you try to prove the eternity of the celestial spheres—or of the matter of those spheres—by arguments that do not entail such a conclusion. At most, these arguments either lead to the wholesale negation of acting and origination—which is patently false by necessity and universal consensus—or they yield only the premise that every event is preceded by another event. This, however, does not establish the eternity of the universe; rather, it merely shows that the Lord has never ceased to act, whether by actions that subsist in His essence or by created entities external to Him that arise successively, one after another. Neither of these two possibilities supports your position; indeed, each one contradicts it. The most you accomplish is to undermine the view or the proof of certain mutakallims, yet this neither validates your own doctrine nor nullifies what the Messengers—may blessings and peace be upon them all—have proclaimed.

We have treated these issues at length elsewhere; we raise them here only because they constitute the very foundation of those who deny that the heavens will be rent asunder and split apart. Such people assert that prophethood is merely a faculty of the soul and that miracles are psychic powers, to the point that they regard these powers as the cause of the signs God produced at the hands of the Prophets. Nevertheless, they still venerate the Prophets, deem obedience to their laws obligatory, and enjoin