from another Necessary Existent, by common agreement and as a matter of necessity. It follows that events have no originator at all, and that the Lord, exalted is He, originates none of them.

This denial of a Maker for what is made, and of any making on the Maker’s part, goes further than any position held by others. For they level this charge against the Mu‘tazila and others like them, saying: “If you maintain that the world came into being, you leave the Maker inactive throughout His beginningless eternity.”

The response to them is: “You have left the Maker forever without producing any event, as is plainly evident to anyone who reflects on this. You have thus denied that He ever brings about any goodness or beneficence, in eternity past or eternity future.

“As for His producing the necessary concomitants of His existence, that claim of yours is itself disputed, and more than one scholar has demonstrated its invalidity. You would then have denied Him every action, act of making, emanation, necessitation, and entailment, in eternity past and eternity future.”

As for denying that what is made has a maker, this is not a position known to be held by any recognized group. Rather, all known peoples agree that whatever is made must have a maker. This is a self-evident truth of reason.

Yet according to your position, events continually come into being without a maker, since nothing whatsoever can come into being from a cause that has been complete from eternity.

Moreover, events differ in