And this view is among the most untenable views held by humankind, for it entails that nothing new can occur in the world. If there is an eternal, complete cause whose effect coexists with it, and the entire world is its effect, whether through an intermediary or directly, then everything in the world must be eternal. Nothing could therefore come into being in the world, contrary to what we observe.

Moreover, when they established the Necessary Existent through contingent existence, their evidence for contingency was something that comes into being and requires a cause to bring it into being. If nothing in the world comes into being, the contingency through which they established the Necessary Existent is nullified. It then follows either that nothing in the world is necessarily existent or contingently existent—which excludes both contradictory alternatives from existence—or that everything in it is necessarily existent. In that case, something that came into being after not existing would be necessarily existent.

Furthermore, if an effect exists only together with its complete cause, it follows that nothing can come into being unless its cause is complete. Yet, at the moment it comes into being, nothing has occurred that would necessitate the coming into being of a complete cause for it. If such an occurrence is supposed, this would entail an entire series of causes and effects coming into being at a single instant. This is an infinite regress of causes, whose invalidity is evident to sound reason and acknowledged by all rational people. It differs from an infinite succession of events, in which each event occurs only after another event; this is a matter of well-known disagreement.