is the Creator of all things. For this establishes that nothing is beginningless except Allah, and that everything other than Him comes into being after not having existed, whether it is called an intellect, a soul, a body, or anything else. This is unlike the argument advanced by the adherents of innovated speculative theology to establish that things came into being. For they said:

“Even if it were sound, it would establish only that bodies came into being. Yet we have established the existence of entities other than intellects, and the ‘speculative theologians’ have offered no proof that these do not exist.”

Later thinkers, such as al-Shahrastānī, al-Rāzī, and al-Āmidī, agreed with them on this. They claimed that the speculative theologians had no proof negating these intellectual substances, and that their argument for bodies having come into being did not encompass them. Consequently, those who claimed to answer them with “the overwhelming reply” fell into the contradiction mentioned earlier.

It has thus become clear that the very argument they advanced demonstrates the falsity of both their own position and that of the speculative theologians. It also establishes, by a sound and unassailable demonstration, that everything other than Allah came into being and that He alone is beginningless. Thus it has become clear—all praise belongs to Allah—that their principal argument for the beginninglessness of the world establishes only the opposite of their position: that everything other than Allah came into being. To Allah belong all praise and gratitude.

As for the “argument” they advanced to establish that motion and time have always existed, and that this kind could not have had a beginning—an argument relied upon by Aristotle and his followers—they may be told:

This does not establish the beginninglessness of any particular motion or its time, nor of any particular moving thing. It therefore does not establish what they seek to prove: the beginninglessness of the celestial sphere, its motion, and its time;