They failed to distinguish between what necessarily entails a beginning and coming into existence—namely, a particular act and its particular effect—and what does not, namely, acting and speaking as such. The latter can be perpetual even though each individual instance comes into being, just as they can continue perpetually into the future even though each individual instance passes away. This is unlike a creator whose particular creation is perpetually inseparable from him: that is false according to clear reason and authentic revelation. Hence, the natural dispositions of rational people concur in rejecting it. Only a handful of philosophers disputed this, such as Avicenna and his like, who claimed that a contingent thing produced by an agent could be beginningless and necessarily existent through another. In this they opposed the vast majority of rational people, as well as their predecessors, Aristotle and his followers. The latter did not maintain this, although they held the celestial spheres to be beginningless.

Aristotle was the first of the Peripatetic philosophers to maintain that the spheres were beginningless, basing this on the affirmation of a final cause for the celestial sphere’s motion, which the sphere moves to imitate. They did not affirm an originating agent for it, nor did they affirm anything contingent that was beginningless and necessarily existent through another. Although they were more ignorant of Allah and more deeply steeped in unbelief than their later followers, they conceded to the majority of rational people that whatever is contingent in itself must have come into being after not existing.

They were therefore compelled to say: “His speech is created and separate from Him.”

Another group agreed with them that the existence of an infinity is impossible, but held that acts of choice subsist in Him. They therefore said that in pre-eternity He did not speak, and indeed speech was not even within His power; then He began to speak, with speech subsisting in Him, without any new occurrence. This is the position of the Hāshimiyyah, the Karrāmiyyah, and others.