The twelfth response is as follows:

The principal argument of those who deny this is that, if He were receptive to these events from eternity, this would entail their existence, or the possibility of their existence, from eternity. They established this in the “well-known method” by arguing that whatever is receptive to a thing cannot be devoid of both it and its opposite. The majority disputed this “premise,” as did al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and others.

They say that every body necessarily possesses one member of each genus of accidents, because whatever is receptive to a thing cannot be devoid of both it and its opposite. For this reason, some turned instead to the following argument: if He were receptive to these events, His receptivity to them would be inseparable from His Essence. This requires the following explanation: if He were receptive to temporally originated events, He would never be devoid of an originated event or its opposite.

As for their statement, “Whatever is receptive to a thing is not devoid of its opposite,” it may be argued, on this approach, that this applies exclusively to Him and not to anything else. Alternatively, it may be said that it applies universally as well.

Their own associates then say to them: What you have stated concerning Him is refuted by the receptivity of all other subjects to the attributes they receive. If their receptivity to what they receive is inseparable from their essence, they must always be receptive to it. If it is an accidental property of their essence, then they are receptive to that receptivity. This necessarily entails either an infinite regress or an ultimate receptivity that is inseparable from the essence. It would therefore follow that, for everything receptive to anything, its receptivity to it is inseparable from its essence. Yet this is not the case, for human beings and other existing things are receptive to attributes in one state but not in another.

The answer to this is that a created being which is receptive to certain attributes in certain circumstances