The second approach is that of those who maintain that existence is confined to two categories: (1) that which can be physically pointed to, and (2) that which subsists in something that can be pointed to. Any two existent things, they say, are either spatially distinct or occupy the same locus. Among them are some who state outright that nothing exists except the body and that which inheres in the body—a discussion treated in detail elsewhere.
The third approach runs as follows: even if one were to concede that the non-existence of realities beyond bodies and accidents has not been demonstrated, the very proof for the origination of bodies and accidents nonetheless entails the origination of everything other than God.
This becomes clear in the fourth reply. There is no doubt that the dialecticians who affirm the temporal origination of the world’s bodies and their accidents—among them the Muʿtazilites, Kullābīs, Karrāmīs, Hashimīs, Najjārīs, Darrārīs, Jahmīs, and those jurists, Sufis, and ḥadīth scholars who agree with them—base their case on the maxim that whatever is not free of temporal events is itself originated. These thinkers divide into two groups.
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The first group holds that a body is never devoid of temporal events, and that whatever is never devoid of such events must be originated. Consequently, they affirm without qualification the origination of both bodies and their accidents.
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The second group contends that bodies are of two kinds: some are free of temporal events, others are not. Only the latter, they argue, are originated; the former are not. This view is espoused by certain members of the Hashimīs, Karrāmīs, and others. According to them, rest is a mere privation rather than a positive reality, and the first occurrence of events within the Eternal after they had not been is no different from the first occurrence of events that He brings about after they had not been. The proofs advanced by this group for the origination of the body