and because some of them were beginninglessly eternal as well.

For this reason, they were not necessary consequences of His essence alone in beginningless eternity.

This is unlike those things that are necessary consequences of His beginninglessly eternal, necessarily existent essence, whose nonexistence is impossible: His essence cannot exist beginninglessly without them. Whenever the nonexistence of such a consequence is supposed, it entails the nonexistence of the beginninglessly eternal, necessarily existent essence. But its nonexistence is impossible; hence the nonexistence of its beginninglessly eternal consequence is also impossible. Such a consequence therefore cannot possibly be contingent. Rather, it can only be necessary and beginninglessly eternal, its essence admitting no nonexistence.

This is what was to be established.

It has thus become clear that whatever is beginninglessly eternal necessarily exists: its nonexistence is impossible, and it cannot possibly be contingent. All rational thinkers, earlier and later, have agreed on this—even Aristotle and all his philosophical followers down to al-Fārābī and others, as well as Ibn Sīnā and his followers.

Yet these latter thinkers contradicted themselves. In one place they agreed with their predecessors and the majority, while here they opposed all rational thinkers and contradicted themselves. For they affirmed the existence of a contingent being that admits both existence and nonexistence, while also being beginninglessly eternal and necessary—even if it is said: “It is necessary through another.”