Secondly, in refuting the claim that the occurrence of temporally originated events is impossible, it may be said:

This rests on the renewal of these matters through the renewal of relations, states, and privations, for people agree that these matters undergo renewal. Al-Āmidī distinguished between the two verbally, saying: “These are temporally originated events, while those are renewals.” Verbal distinctions, however, do not affect substantive truths.

It may therefore be said: If the renewal of these things confers perfection on Him, then He previously lacked that perfection, which is a deficiency. If it confers deficiency on Him, He cannot be characterized by it.

Thirdly, it may be said:

The perfection with which He must be characterized is that whose existence is possible. As for what is impossible, it is not a perfection with which any existing being can be characterized. It is impossible for the temporally originated events connected with His power and will to exist all together from eternity. Their absence from eternity is therefore not a deficiency, because the absence of what is impossible is no deficiency.

Fourthly, it may be said:

If we posit a being that performs one act after another and is itself capable of acting, and another being that cannot itself do anything, but is like an inanimate object incapable of movement, the former is more perfect than the latter. The absence of these acts is therefore necessarily a deficiency, whereas their existence, insofar as it is possible, is perfection.

Fifthly, it may be said:

We do not concede that their absence is, without qualification, either a deficiency or a perfection, nor that their existence is, without qualification, either a deficiency or a perfection. Rather, their existence at the time determined by His will and power