If (1) it is said that this is possible, it would then be possible (2) for the world, together with the events within it, to exist while maintaining that events began to occur after there had previously been none—I mean events as a category. Every particular event, however, occurs after it had not existed.

[The Three Views on the Perpetual Succession of Kinds of Events in the Beginningless Past and Endless Future]

The dispute concerns only events as a category: can their succession continue perpetually into both the future and the past, into the future alone, or into neither the past nor the future? (3) There are three well-known views among people (4) of rational inquiry, both Muslims and others.

The weakest is the view of those who maintain that their succession can continue perpetually neither into the past nor into the future, as held by Jahm ibn Safwān (5) and Abū al-Hudhayl al-Allāf.

The second is the view of those who maintain that their succession can continue perpetually into the future but not into the past. This is the view of many theologians among the Jahmiyyah and Muʿtazilah, as well as those who agree with them among the Karrāmiyyah, Ashʿariyyah, and Shīʿah, and those jurists and others who concur with them.

The third view is that of those who maintain:

[It is possible] (6) for their succession to continue perpetually into both the past and the future. This is held by the leading authorities of Ahl al-Hadith, the leading philosophers, and others.

Those who maintain the pre-eternity of the celestial spheres, however, such as Aristotle and his followers, hold that celestial events have continued perpetually, that there is no revolution except that it (7) was preceded by another, without any first, and that Allah