Section

Leading speculative thinkers, “such as Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Rāzī and Abū al-Hasan al-Āmidī,” and others presented the arguments of those who deny “the inherence of temporal events in Him” and demonstrated the invalidity of them all. They cited four arguments advanced by these deniers:

The first is the “well-known argument”: if temporal events subsisted in Him, He would always have either them or their opposites, and whatever is never free of temporal events must itself have a beginning. They challenged the first premise; as for the second, al-Rāzī and others explained its invalidity. This has been discussed at length elsewhere.

The second is that if He were receptive to them in beginningless eternity, this receptivity would be inseparable from His essence. Receptivity would entail the possibility of what is received, yet the existence of temporal events in beginningless eternity is impossible. They refuted this argument themselves by countering it with the parallel case of divine power: He has the power to bring temporal events into existence, and power entails the possibility of its object; yet “the existence of the object of His power”—namely, temporal events—in beginningless eternity is impossible.

“This argument” is invalid on several grounds. The first is that “the existence of temporal events” must be either impossible or possible. If it is possible, then receptivity to them and power over them can always be possible. In that case, the existence of their kind in beginningless eternity would not be impossible; rather, their kind could be both an object of power and something capable of being received;