If it is said, “The essence necessitates its existence in perpetual succession,” it follows that the beginningless, absolutely simple One, who has neither attributes nor acts, intrinsically necessitates successive, differing things separate from Himself, whether through an intermediary inseparable from Him or without an intermediary.
Besides being self-evidently false to reason, this contradicts their principles concerning the correspondence between what necessitates and what is necessitated, the inseparability of an effect from its complete cause, and the Necessary Existent’s being a complete cause.
Sound reason clearly recognizes that, if a necessitated effect comes into being gradually, something must arise in its necessitating cause to account for this. Otherwise, if the necessitating cause is the same when the second event occurs as it was when the first occurred, its assigning temporal precedence to the first would be a determination without a determining factor; and giving priority to the first would be giving priority to the first—a preference without a determining ground.
Furthermore, motions occurring one after another cannot be the effect of a beginningless, eternal, complete cause whose effect is coeval with it. The effect of an eternal, complete cause is coeval with that cause, whereas none of the motions occurring successively is coeval with the cause. They therefore cannot be its effect.
This differs from the case in which the agent brings about, one after another, acts that subsist in Himself. His essence necessarily exists in itself, so there is nothing impossible in its necessarily entailing perpetual action.
Produced things, however, are all contingent; none exists necessarily in itself. Thus, none of them can necessitate perpetual action. Rather, that depends upon the One who exists necessarily in Himself.
Second, it may be said: This holds only for what is intrinsically necessary concerning Him, whether by affirmation or negation. As for what depends upon His will and power, such as His acts, it occurs when Allah wills it and does not occur when He does not will it. Yet they cannot establish that it