that can come into being will not do so unless something occurs that necessarily entails its coming into being. Whatever Allah wills inevitably comes to be, and its existence becomes necessary through His will. Whatever He does not will does not come to be; indeed, its existence is impossible without Allah Most High willing it. Whatever Allah wills to bring into being must therefore come into being, necessarily so through His will, not in itself. Whatever He does not will to bring into being cannot come into being and must necessarily remain nonexistent, because the will of Allah that would necessarily entail its coming into being has not occurred.

Then the eternalist philosophers, who maintain that the world is beginningless, said:

“The proof you have presented does not establish that the world had a beginning; rather, it entails that it had no beginning. For it is impossible for events to come into being after not existing, proceeding from an essence that had always been inactive. Thus, the world must be beginningless.”

They expressed this by saying that if all the conditions required for His being an agent existed from eternity, His action must necessarily have existed from eternity. Otherwise, the effect would fail to follow from its fully sufficient cause. In that case, if they came to exist subsequently, this would entail favoring one alternative without a determining factor. If, however, those conditions did not exist from eternity, their subsequent existence would itself be something newly occurring and would therefore require something newly occurring to account for it. Otherwise, something would come into being without a cause bringing it into being. This would then entail an infinite regress of events, since the same reasoning applies to this event as to any other. This is something the Muʿtazilah and the speculative theologians who agree with them deny.

They said:

“You therefore face two alternatives: either affirm an infinite regress of events or affirm that one alternative can be favored without a determining factor. Yet both are impossible according to you.”