Abū al-Barakāt, the author of al-Mu'tabar, and others have reported both views from them. He himself holds that the First Cause acts by choice, while maintaining that its action is beginningless. The question of beginninglessness is not inseparably linked to whether the agent acts by choice, according to either group, contrary to what al-Rāzī claimed about both. Likewise, the possibility of a produced effect existing simultaneously with its agent is maintained by some who hold that the world is beginningless, not by all of them, nor by any follower of the messengers, nor by anyone who holds that God creates what He brings into being and originates its existence.
Accordingly, the vast majority of rational people maintain that an agent precedes its produced effect—with an effected temporal precedence, or a precedence posited in terms of time. This is one of the two responses.
[The second argument]
It may be said: Suppose they meant by precedence the precedence of a cause over its effect, without precedence in time or in terms of posited time, and suppose that what is entailed were identical with what entails it. Nevertheless, when a single thing is expressed in two formulations, each indicating a description different from the other, the distinction between their meanings is useful, even though the entity is one and the same. Thus, an entity may be known under one description but not under another. If precedence and causation refer to the same entity, what is understood by the cause itself is still not what is understood by precedence itself, even though the two necessarily accompany one another. Rather, being a cause means that it entails and necessitates its effect, whereas having precedence means that it is before it.
Someone may understand priority and being before something without yet knowing that it is a cause.
Thus, if it is said, “If it were its cause, it would precede it,” this would be correct.
Reason then judges with certainty that a thing cannot be before itself, much less before what is before it, however priority and being before something are interpreted.