false according to plain reason, although no rational thinker before these people is known to have held it. They were driven to this position only by their belief in the soundness of the speculative theologians’ proof that bodies had a beginning, and in the philosophers’ assertion that there are existents and contingent beings other than bodies, together with their affirmation of a cause that necessitates its effects by its very essence.

Having based their position on the false premises of both groups, they were committed to this consequence, even though combining these two positions involved a contradiction. For the speculative theologians’ principal argument rests on ruling out a beginningless succession of events, whereas the philosophers’ principal argument rests on causal efficacy being inseparable from the Being whose existence is necessary in itself. If they affirm a beginningless soul with an infinite succession of conceptions and volitions, they must admit the possibility of an infinite succession of events. This invalidates the speculative theologians’ fundamental premise on which they based their assertion that bodies had a beginning. Their agreement with the speculative theologians would then have no rational proof to support it. It is thus clear that they have combined two contradictory positions.

Abū 'Abd Allāh Ibn al-Khatīb and others like him were more accomplished than these people and recognized that these two positions could not be reconciled. They therefore did not adopt this contradictory position. Yet they did not find their way to the position of the early Muslim generations and the imams, although elsewhere they mention its fundamental principles and establish that most rational thinkers are committed to them. Had they recognized Allah’s speech and acts, which subsist in His essence and are connected to His will and power, and His ever possessing the attribute of perfection, they would have escaped these perplexities.