And a position that brings reason and revelation into agreement for us is better than agreeing with you that the celestial spheres have always existed and that Allah Most High has no attributes. For the unbelief in this position, contrary to divine law, and its unsoundness, contrary to reason, become clear to anyone who examines it. This is especially so since the philosophers do not rule out events and attributes subsisting in what is eternal and beginningless, or a body being eternal and beginningless. Indeed, they regard all of this as necessary, yet they have no proof that any particular body, such as the celestial spheres or the like, has existed without beginning.
[The Third Argument]
The philosophers may be told:
The rational proofs you have advanced to establish that the Lord has always acted and that events have always occurred demonstrate the opposite of your position, rather than support it.
For this entails that the Necessary Existent has always acted and brought events into being, whereas your position entails that He has not brought any event into being. This is because the cause necessitating these successive events either existed from eternity or did not.
If the former is the case, every event must have existed from eternity, which is impossible, since the effect necessitated and entailed by a complete cause cannot lag behind it.
They say:
The Necessary Existent is a complete cause, none of whose effects can lag behind Him. Thus, if these successive events are His effects, whether through an intermediary or without one, they must coexist with Him, because the effect of a complete cause coexists with it and cannot lag behind it. If its effect cannot lag behind it, then whatever comes after it is not its effect.
It therefore follows that He has brought no event into being, whether through an intermediary or without one.
Their assertion of an unceasing succession of events does not help them under these circumstances, if they make Him a complete cause that necessarily entails its effect. For their position assumes that He has no act whatsoever that subsists in His essence and occurs anew: neither creating, nor rising above, nor anything else.