Muslims—that He has always possessed power—there is that which makes clear that He has always had the power to act and speak by His power and will (1).

The position that He has always been speaking and has always been acting by His will is reported from the Salaf and the leading Muslims, from the Prophet’s Household and others, such as Ibn al-Mubārak (2), Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Bukhārī, Uthmān ibn Saīd al-Dārimī, and others. It is also reported from Jafar ibn Muhammad al-Sādiq regarding acts extending to others—let alone acts confined to Himself—namely, the everlasting continuity of His beneficence (3), *) (4)

[This is his statement: “And the Muslims’ invocation, ‘O You whose beneficence is eternal’—if by ‘eternal’ is meant something subsisting in Him.”] (5).

The eternalist philosophers held that [the celestial spheres and other parts of] (6) the universe are eternal, that the temporal events within it have no beginning, and that the Creator is, by His very essence, the necessitating cause of the universe (7), rather than an agent acting by His will and power or acting of His own accord. [It is necessarily known from the religion brought by the Messengers that Allah Most High is the Creator of all things and that whatever is created must have come into being. Whoever posits alongside Allah anything as eternal as He is knows that he contradicts what the Messengers have proclaimed, as well as unequivocal reason] (8). Yet you agreed with them (9) in part of their false doctrine when you said that He does not act