—in a state of inactivity, unable either to act or to speak, and that afterwards He became able to act and to speak. Thus He would have passed from incapacity to capacity without anything new coming into being, and a thing would have shifted from intrinsic impossibility to intrinsic possibility without any occurrence at all. This further entails that between the Creator and His first speech and deed there lies an endless duration—though in reality there is no such duration—and that there existed a “time before time,” and other notions invented by the Jahmī and Muʿtazilite theologians and those who sided with them among the Muslims.

When the later freethinkers perceived the unsoundness of these claims, they imagined that by repudiating them through affirming the Lord’s perpetual activity and asserting that whatever can issue from Him must necessarily issue, it would follow that this world is without beginning or end, and that the Most High neither originated this universe nor alters it nor will establish the Final Resurrection, for His act is a single, unchanging act.

Such reasoning is among the grossest forms of ignorance and error rationally, just as it is among the gravest kinds of atheism religiously; for the divine act is not numerically one—were it truly so, nothing would ever come into existence. Since He does in fact bring about one thing after another, there is no difference between His creating species of living beings that never existed, His bringing into being an entire world that never existed, or His producing individual persons that never existed.

The varied events found throughout the universe bear witness to the occurrence of acts that occasion them. For this reason the Exalted, Glorious One sets forth proofs for the Maker’s existence by referring to the observable events He originates—such as sending down rain, causing plants to grow, and creating humankind and other living creatures.

Elsewhere I have detailed the disputes surrounding this issue, for a group of dialectical theologians—among the Muʿtazila and others—maintain that the complete efficient cause must