These scholars contend: “Just as you have agreed with us that the divine will is eternal while that which is willed comes later, so too we say that the act is eternal and its effect occurs afterwards.”

A second group maintains: “Rather, the act itself is originated, subsisting in His Essence, and an infinite regress is not entailed here as it would be if the effects themselves were originated in their concrete particulars.” This is the position of various factions among the Karrāmiyyah, the Murjiʾah, and others.

A third group holds: “The individual acts are originated, even though the class or kind of act may be eternal.”

The point at issue is that those who declared the act to be identical with the effect did so only to avoid an infinite regress—yet such a regress is deemed admissible by these philosophers. Consequently, they cannot appeal to the philosophers’ argument. Their only possible proof that the act is the very same as the effect would be either a blanket denial of all divine attributes or a denial of voluntary actions, and both claims are utterly unsound; moreover, they themselves differ over both fundamentals.

The stance of the negators—whether from among them or from others—is weak on both counts, as has been explained elsewhere. Furthermore, affirming that the world is originated entails these two principles, just as these two principles entail the world’s origination.

Given this, it becomes evident that they cannot assert that the act is identical with the effect; it must therefore be something other than it. If the act itself is assumed to be eternal in essence, it would be an inseparable attribute of His, eternal in essence. In that case it would be impossible for it to depend on any temporal events—whether those events are successive in kind or in particular instances—just as it is impossible for His eternal Essence to depend on them. For were His Essence to depend upon something in the way an effect depends on its cause, it would be impossible for