And they say that its contingency derives from its own essence, while its existence derives from another. This rests on their distinction, in external reality, between a thing’s existence and its essence. In their view, therefore, contingency belongs more fundamentally to its essence than existence does.

Had he said, “Then, when they came into existence, or were created, or were originated, he said, ‘I do not love things that exist or have been created,’” this would have been absurd and contradictory, since they had always been so. How much more so if he said, “Then, when they became contingent,” when they had always been contingent!

Moreover, from the moment they rose until they set, they were contingent in themselves, admitting of existence and nonexistence—even though, according to these thinkers, they are eternal and beginningless, and their nonexistence is impossible. Thus, their being in motion would not, for Abraham, be evidence that they were contingent and admitted of existence and nonexistence.

As for the claims that everything that moves has come into being, and that everything that moves is contingent and admits of existence and nonexistence, all rational people agree that this premise is not an innate, self-evident truth. Rather, those who maintain its validity say that it can be known only through subtle reasoning, while those who dispute it say that it is false on both rational and scriptural grounds. Whoever uses it as an example in the opening discussions of the universal sciences does so because of his limited understanding and inability, yet he himself challenges it throughout most of his books.

As for the assertion, “Everything that changes has come into being or is contingent,” if by change he means what is ordinarily understood by that word in the language—such as a healthy person becoming ill, a just person becoming unjust, or a friend becoming an enemy—then establishing this universal proposition requires proof.

If, however, by change he means motion, or the inherence of temporal events without qualification, so that the heavenly bodies are called changing when they rise,