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As for the “second premise,” we say that two conditions must be considered:

First, the perfection must be possible.

Second, it must be free of imperfection, for imperfection is impossible for Allah. Some people, however, may call something an imperfection when it is not. Such a person should be told: What must be affirmed is whatever perfection can possibly exist and is free of imperfection. If you call this an imperfection, and suppose that its absence is impossible, then removing it would not constitute a possible perfection. Nor, even for someone who calls it an imperfection, would it be an imperfection that could possibly be absent.

If it is said, “Creating all created things from eternity is an attribute of perfection and must therefore be affirmed of Him,” the reply is: It is impossible for all created things—or any one of them that entails all temporal events or even a single such event—to exist from eternity. It is impossible for successive temporal events all to exist at a single instant, whether that instant is assumed to be in the past or the future, let alone to be eternal. Whatever entails successive temporal events cannot exist at a single instant, let alone be eternal. This, then, is not even possible, much less a perfection.

Yet bringing events about one after another is more perfect than being devoid of such action, such that He brings nothing into existence that did not previously exist. For an agent capable of acting is more perfect than an agent incapable of acting.