that a perpetual succession of temporal events is possible or that it is impossible. For if such a succession is held to be impossible, everything inseparable from temporal events must itself have come into being. If such a succession is held to be possible, each individual event nevertheless comes into being after not having existed and is preceded by nonexistence. Every constituent of the world necessarily entails an event that comes into being after not having existed and is preceded by nonexistence. For every constituent of the world, and everything that is made and necessarily entails temporal events, its Maker cannot be a beginningless, complete cause that necessarily entails its existence. Since this is impossible, that thing cannot be beginningless. Thus, no particular entity within the world can be beginningless.

As for the Lord having always spoken whenever He wills, or having always acted, with acts subsisting in Him by His will, and similar affirmations—this is precisely what the early Muslim generations and the imams maintained. It is therefore clear that their position is the truth, consistent with both revelation and reason.

As for the philosophers’ position being even more untenable than that of the Mu'tazilites, they may be addressed as follows:

Those people allowed temporal events to proceed from an essence that had always been inactive, with no temporal event subsisting in it or proceeding from it. You, however, maintain that a perpetual succession of differing temporal events proceeds from this essence. Moreover, you went further in denying its attributes, making it absolute existence conditioned by absoluteness, or something similar. Your denial of its attributes is therefore more extreme than that of the Mu'tazilites.