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If it is asked, “What is the source of this dispute, confusion, division, and disagreement?” the answer is:

Its source is the speculative theology that the early Muslim generations condemned and criticized: ambiguous discourse containing both truth and falsehood. Some of it accords with reason and revelation, while some contradicts them. One group adopts negation, thereby denying both truth and falsehood, while another adopts affirmation, thereby affirming both truth and falsehood. In sum, this is discourse contrary to the Quran, the Sunnah, and the consensus of the early Muslim generations. Any discourse that contradicts these is false, and nothing contradicts them except discourse that also contradicts reason and revelation.

This arose because, when they debated the world’s having a beginning and the existence of the Maker, the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and those groups of speculative theologians who agreed with them argued that whatever is never free of events that come into being must itself have come into being.

Those who used this argument to establish that bodies have a beginning said:

Bodies are never free of events that come into being, and whatever is never free of such events must itself have come into being. They then adopted different approaches to establishing the first premise. Sometimes they establish it by arguing that bodies are never free of motion or rest, both of which come into being. At other times, they establish it by arguing that bodies are never free of