The second rational proof is this: whoever is guided, in this field, to distinguish between the generic and the particular will clearly recognize the dividing line between error and correctness in the questions of Divine acts as well as Divine speech and address.
Know that the people of sound intellect are the earliest generations of this community and its leading Imams—the Salaf—those who follow what the Book has brought. They are the very opposite of those who dispute about the Book and oppose it, concerning whom Allah said, “Indeed, those who differ concerning the Book are in extreme dissension” (Qur’an 2:176).
Thus the Lord—exalted is He—brought every contingent thing into being after it had not existed, and everything besides Him is originated after having been nonexistent. From this it by no means follows that the perfection He deserves is itself subject to renewal; rather, He has never ceased to be All-Knowing, All-Powerful, Sovereign, Forgiving, and speaking as He wills, exactly as Imām Aḥmad and other leaders of the Salaf articulated with these very words and the like of them.
If someone claims, “The genus of action must itself be preceded by non-existence,” we reply: Whence have you derived this? Neither the Book nor the Sunnah contains any indication of it, nor does sound reason guide to it. Such a view would require that the Lord become capable of a given genus of action after previously lacking that capability; for if He has never ceased to be capable, the object of His power can come into existence. Should that object have been impossible and then become possible, this would mean that the Lord acquired power after not possessing it, and that the act shifted from impossibility to possibility without any new occurrence or renewal. Yet pre-eternity is not a particular point in time; it is merely the negation of a beginning, just as everlastingness is the negation of an end. For whatever moment one can imagine, pre-eternity stretches before it without limit, as the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said