a cause that necessitates this determination; that cause must therefore be the determining cause.” They replied: “An agent possessing power and freedom of choice gives preference to one of two possible effects over the other without a determining cause.”

They may be told: “Besides being false, this entails a contradiction in your position. You said that determination requires a determining cause, then said that all contingent things have been determined and have come into existence without a determining cause. Indeed, the agent giving preference preferred one of two identical alternatives over the other without a determining cause. If you allow particular determinations in contingent things to exist without a determining cause, even though the agent possessing power stands in the same relation to both alternatives, then it is all the more admissible that the self-existent Being should need no determining cause for the distinctive features of His essence and attributes. For it is known that His essence and attributes have a stronger claim to existence than His effects. If you allow Him to determine His effects, each with its particular reality, measure, and attributes, without any determining cause whatsoever, then all the more should you allow that His own distinctive essence, whose existence is necessary in itself, needs no determining cause.”

This reasoning cannot be reversed. If it is said that His acts require a determining cause, it does not follow that His essence requires one. His essence necessarily exists in itself and therefore needs no cause whatsoever, unlike His effects, which do require a cause. Whatever depends on an agent may be said to depend on a determining cause. By contrast, whatever does not depend on an agent need not depend on a determining cause.

Thus, if it is said that whatever depends on a cause, or whatever depends on