showing that, if acts of Allah Most High are established whose like we have never witnessed, there is nothing objectionable in this. The existence of something for which we know no counterpart conflicts with neither sense perception nor reason. We also show that sense perception and reason are on an equal footing in this regard: we cannot affirm what they establish to be nonexistent, but we can affirm something for which no counterpart is known through them. We have already discussed this concerning matter and duration. The writings of Muslims and adherents of other religions, and their arguments against these eternalists, are numerous and sound, but this is not the place to discuss them.

The same applies to what they have mentioned concerning the agent. This is the argument of Ibn Sīnā, the foremost of these later eternalists, and it is the argument on which he relied when he claimed that nothing can proceed from a single essence after not having proceeded from it unless something comes into being; and the same argument applies to that new occurrence as to