He cannot become free of the temporal events that subsist in Him, nor cease to possess them. For if temporal events subsisted in Him and then ceased, He would be capable of their coming into being and ceasing to be. If He were capable of this, He could never be free of it; and whatever is never free of temporal events has a beginning. What their premises allow is merely that temporal events may subsist in Him, just as He may perform and originate them. This does not entail that they have always accompanied Him, just as it does not entail that He has always been bringing them about. In their view, coming into being is distinct from bringing into being. Accordingly, they regard the Quran as having come into being, but not as having been brought into being: what is brought into being requires an act of origination, whereas coming into being does not.

When they say, “He was free of them in pre-eternity and was at rest,” they do not mean that a temporal event subsisted in Him. Rather, they say that rest is a privative state, as the philosophers also maintain, whereas motion is a positively existing state. This contrasts with the position of those among the Mu'tazilah and the Ash'ariyyah who maintain that rest, like motion, is a positively existing state.

Thus, once a temporal event occurs in Him, that event cannot cease to exist, for a temporal event can cease to exist only through an act of origination subsisting in Him, and this is impossible. They maintain that it is impossible for a body to cease to exist. In their view, the acts of bringing creatures into being and annihilating them subsist in the Creator. Thus, the temporal events that subsist in them subsist in Him. Were He to annihilate them, both origination and annihilation would subsist in Him. He would therefore be capable of having a temporal event arise within Him and of that event ceasing to exist. Whatever is such can never be free of origination and annihilation, and thus can never be free of temporal events; whatever is never free of them has a beginning. This is so because whatever can receive something cannot be devoid of both it and its opposite, as the Kullābiyyah maintained.

The Mu'tazilah, however, say: