combination and separation, both of which come into being. At other times, they establish it by arguing that bodies are never free of the four states—combination, separation, motion, and rest—all of which come into being. These are the approaches of the Muʿtazilah and those who agree with them that bodies are never free of certain kinds of accidents. At other times, they establish it by arguing that, for every genus of accidents, a body is never without an accident belonging to that genus.

They say that whatever is capable of receiving something cannot be devoid of both it and its opposite. They also say that accidents cannot persist, because an accident does not endure for two moments. This is the approach that al-Āmidī chose, rejecting the others as unsound. He stated that the majority of his fellow theologians relied upon it. A group of jurists belonging to the schools of the four imams also agreed with them on this approach, including al-Qādī Abū Yaʿlā, Abū al-Maʿālī al-Juwaynī, Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī, and others like them.

As for the Hishāmiyyah, the Karrāmiyyah, and other groups who hold that every body has a beginning, while also maintaining that events that come into being can inhere in that which is beginningless: if they hold that whatever is never free of such events must itself have come into being—as the Karrāmiyyah and others do, agreeing with the Muʿtazilah on this principle—then they say that the beginningless body can be free of events that come into being, unlike bodies that have come into being, which are never free of such events.

There is disagreement over “rest”: is it a positive reality or an absence?