and power. But they said: A succession of temporal occurrences cannot take place in Him, for whatever is subject to such a succession must itself have originated. They agreed with the Muʿtazilah in using this argument to establish that the world had a beginning.

Just as Ibn Kullāb distinguished between accidents and temporal occurrences, these people distinguished between temporal occurrences arising anew and their being inseparable from Him. They denied that such occurrences were inseparable from Him, without denying that they arise in Him—just as they said that created things separate from Him come into existence, after not having existed, through His will and power.

The eternalist philosophers demand that all these groups explain what causes temporal occurrences to arise after not having existed. They argue that this entails giving one alternative precedence without a determining factor, and temporal occurrences arising without a newly occurring cause. They say that this is impossible according to clear reason. This is their most formidable specious argument for “the eternity of the world”—a thorny predicament and an overwhelming difficulty. These groups found themselves unable to answer them, to the point that they resorted to concessions.

We have discussed this at length elsewhere and set out “the decisive answers” to the philosophers’ arguments according to the approach of the early generations and the imams. We have explained that whoever affirms what the texts of the Quran and Sunnah entail can engage the philosophers in rational debate and decisively refute them, and will recognize that sound reason accords with authentic revelation.

We have also explained how “each of the groups within the Muslim community” can answer them. Since these groups are closer to the truth than the philosophers, they can answer them by showing what necessarily follows from the philosophers’ own premises, in a way the philosophers cannot evade. They can say to the philosophers: “Your position is more evidently false, according to revelation and reason, than the position of any Muslim group.” Thus, each Muslim group can say to them: