What Ibn Rushd stated has now become clear. He said:

“If by ‘contingent’ we understand that which has a cause and is necessary, this entails only that it has a cause. We may suppose that this cause itself has a cause, and continue in this way indefinitely. Thus, we do not arrive at an existent without a cause—which is what they mean by the Necessary Existent—unless by ‘contingent,’ which he set in opposition to that which has no cause, we understand the truly contingent. For it is among these contingent things that an infinite succession of causes is impossible.”

Ibn Rushd said that if ‘contingent’ means what rational people understand to be contingent—namely, that which comes into existence after not existing and can exist at one time and be nonexistent at another—then this is the truly contingent. If this is what is meant by ‘contingent,’ and it is said that existence is divided into the contingent and the non-contingent, and that the contingent is whatever has a cause, meaning the truly contingent, which is originated, then the statement really means that existence is divided into the eternal and the originated, as the theologians have said.

Accordingly, these contingent things—which are originated things—are those among which an infinite succession of causes is impossible. For it is necessarily known that whatever is originated must have an originator. If we suppose an infinite number of originated things, each must have an originator, and the totality of originated things would stand in even greater need of an originator. For the more numerous the originated things, the greater their need for an originator than that of any one