the temporal origination of the Creator, just as we shall show that denying direction entails asserting the Creator’s nonexistence. This matter has been explained elsewhere, where it has been shown that the negators’ argument for the temporal origination of every body is false and innovated. Indeed, Abū al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī stated that this argument runs contrary to the arguments of the prophets, messengers, and their followers, and that they regarded it as forbidden.

That being so, those who affirm direction may say to them:

If accepting these two innate premises as true, together with the Creator, Most High, being above the world and separate from it, entails that some bodies are eternal, I can accept that, in accordance with the position of some groups of speculative theologians—indeed, many of them. In doing so, I would not be agreeing with the eternalists who say that the celestial spheres are eternal and without beginning, such that one could say: “This contradicts the Quran and Sunnah,” or “This is disbelief.” Rather, I affirm what the Quran and Sunnah declare, and what Muslims unanimously agree upon, concerning the creation of created things and the temporal origination of things that originate in time. As for whether the Creator is a body or is not a body, such that it may be said that all bodies