or the coming-to-be of some of its pre-conditions; and, in their view, the successive arising of an infinite series of conditions and auxiliaries is admissible.

He then said: “Rather, the brilliant, conclusive reply is that none of this follows from the origination of the corporeal world. For it is perfectly possible that from pre-eternity there existed an intellect or a soul from which successive concepts proceed, each one following upon the previous, until they culminate in a particular conception that constitutes the pre-condition for the effusion of the corporeal world from the eternal Principle.”

I say: This answer that al-Ārmūwī offers he has borrowed from Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s al-Maṭālib al-ʿĀliya, where the very same response is set out. The answer, however, is invalid and self-contradictory, for it entails the existence of events with no first moment. Yet the mutakallimūn who upheld the origination of bodies did so precisely on the ground that a series of events without a beginning is impossible. If that premise is sound, the reply in question collapses, and it necessarily follows that the souls in which those successive conceptions occur must themselves be originated, because they would otherwise constitute beginning-less events. But if, as the so-called “brilliant reply” claims, an infinite regress of events is permissible, then the theologians’ proof for the origination of bodies is demolished.