Jahm ibn Ṣafwān, who preceded Abū al-Hudhayl, was the first to employ this argument and to deny the divine attributes. On that basis he claimed that the entire universe will be annihilated, that the bliss of Paradise and its inhabitants will likewise perish, and that nothing will remain in existence but God alone—just as things were at the very beginning.

Those who trod his path found themselves unable to match his proof. Some therefore say, “Analogical reasoning supports what he asserted, but the scriptural texts affirm the everlastingness of the two abodes,” as a number of writers, such as the author of al-Īḍāḥ, have recorded. This is unsound speech, for once a rational proof is overturned it loses all force, and the revealed texts never conflict with clear, sound reason.

Others maintain—as Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf, the Muʿtazilī authority, did—that motions will cease while bodies will endure. Yet this entails the existence of bodies devoid of motion; and if one allows that in the future, he must allow it in the past, thereby conceding the very pre-eternity of bodies from which he tried to flee. Many of them attempt to distinguish between past and future by saying that the former has already entered into existence whereas the latter has not, and that, for this reason, parity can be applied to the one but not to the other.

This distinction is weak for two reasons. First, the past is non-existent, and thus the parity they invoke cannot be applied to it in the manner they claim.