—be possible. Possibility, however, is not confined to any determinate time: there is no time one might posit without possibility already being established before it. Thus, there is no first point at which acting became possible, admissible, and valid. It necessarily follows that action has always been possible, admissible, and valid, (1 which entails that the Lord has always had the power to do so 1)(1). It therefore follows that temporal events extending endlessly into the past are possible(2).”

The disputant, speaking on behalf of those(3) speculative theologians among the Jahmiyyah, the Mu'tazilah, and their followers, said:

“We do not concede that the possibility of temporal events has no beginning. Rather, we say that the possibility of temporal events—on condition that they are preceded by nonexistence—has no beginning. This is because, in our view, temporal events cannot be beginningless as a kind; rather, their kind must have originated. Although their kind cannot be beginningless, its origination is not required to have occurred at any one specific time. Thus, the possibility of temporal events, on condition(4) that they are preceded by nonexistence, has no first point—unlike the general kind of temporal events.”

They are told:

“Granted that you say this. Yet it is said: In your view, the possibility of the general kind of temporal events has a beginning, for according to you the general category of temporal origination(5) became possible after it had not been possible. Yet this possibility has no determinate time; rather, there is no time one might posit without possibility already being established before it. Possibility must therefore be perpetual. Otherwise, the general kind would have shifted from possibility to impossibility without anything having occurred or anything new having arisen.”