an agent acting by choice, His effect could not be beginningless, since He would then be intending to bring into existence what already exists, and bringing about what has already been brought about is impossible.

Some have objected to his proof on the grounds that part of the world could be temporally originated, with an agent acting by choice, while another part could be beginningless, with a cause whose effects follow necessarily from its essence. Others allowed the possibility that He could be a cause whose effects follow necessarily from His essence, while His effect could be an agent acting by choice who brought something else into existence.”

I say:

This objection is invalid. For an agent acting by choice, the coming into being of his act after it did not exist is itself a temporally originated event. If that agent is the effect of a complete, necessitating cause, its effect cannot lag behind it. Nothing can originate from it, nor from any of its necessary concomitants, nor from their necessary concomitants, and so on.

If it is supposed that the temporally originated part has an agent whose existence is necessary in itself, who is not the agent of the other part, then—notwithstanding that no one has asserted this and that the proofs of the Maker’s oneness refute it—it also invalidates the argument of those who maintain the world’s beginninglessness. Their principal argument is that the act of that which exists necessarily in itself cannot lag behind it. If they allow its act to lag behind it, the foundation of their argument collapses.

We have explained elsewhere that the proof he has advanced refutes the philosophers’ contention that the world proceeded from a necessitating cause, and that their contention entails temporally originated events arising without a cause.

As for the claim that the act of an agent acting by choice cannot coexist with him, we have discussed this elsewhere. We can, however, demonstrate the falsity of the philosophers’ position as follows:

Either the act of an agent acting by choice may coexist with him, or it must come after him. If it must come after him, their assertion that the world is beginningless is invalid. For if the act must come after its agent, then the effect must all the more do so, if the effect is considered distinct from the act. But if the effect is considered to be