Rather, this issue has bewildered many minds and occasioned much dispute and contention. Hence, those who argue that whatever is never free of originated events must itself have come into being recognize that this argument is incomplete unless they establish the impossibility of a beginningless succession of originated events. They have offered various arguments for this, which we have discussed elsewhere. There are “three views” on this principle.

One view holds that whatever is never free of originated events must itself have come into being, and that a beginningless succession of originated events is impossible without qualification. This is the position of the Muʿtazilah and those who followed them among the Karrāmiyyah, the Ashʿariyyah, and the jurists and others who joined them.

Another view holds that a perpetual succession of originated events is possible without qualification. Not everything that coexists with one originated event after another, in a beginningless succession, must itself have come into being. Rather, it may be eternal, whether its existence is necessary in itself or through another. This is sometimes expressed in terms of cause and effect, agent and product, and the like. This is the position of the philosophers who affirm the eternity of the world and the celestial spheres, such as Aristotle and his followers, including Themistius, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Proclus, al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, and others like them. As for the majority of philosophers who preceded Aristotle, they did not hold