If he says, “Its having acted is something existent,” then before acting, that which is beginningless possessed a certain attribute. Either something newly arises that requires it to cease possessing that attribute, or nothing does. If nothing newly arises, it must not act. If something does newly arise, this invalidates his statement that once it possesses an attribute, it cannot cease possessing it.

If it is said, “By an attribute I mean only a quality subsisting in its essence, and that has not ceased to exist,” the reply is: Granted that this is what you meant, your proof nevertheless encompasses this and other things. It implies that what is beginningless and eternal cannot pass from one state to another in any respect, because whatever is beginningless is so for a reason, and what is beginningless cannot cease to exist.

Thus, according to your proof, anything newly arising, changing, or coming into being—whether you call it an attribute, a state, a temporal occurrence, or an act, and whether it subsists in that which is beginningless or in something else—cannot occur without beginningless, eternal things.

If this is true, nothing can come into being. If he allows things to come into being through something beginningless without any existent thing newly arising as a condition of their existence, then he has allowed beginningless realities to change without a cause.

If, on the other hand, he says, “Something must newly arise through which they come into being,” then the arising of something new entails a change that did not exist in eternity past. His argument is thereby invalidated.

This can be clarified by presenting an argument parallel to his own. He is to be told: That which is beginningless and has never acted cannot become an agent. For if it does not act, this must be either due to itself or due to a cause—and so on to the end of the argument.