The first answer:

This is the position of those who say that action and speech have always subsisted in Him by His power and will. On this view, everlasting determination is possible without requiring any effect to have existed from eternity, let alone the celestial spheres.

The second answer:

This is the position of those who say that it is impossible for an effect to have existed from eternity.

On this view, if you say to them:

“If you maintain that He did not act and then acted, something calling for His action must have arisen, or something incompatible with it must have ceased to exist. The same argument then applies to that, without any stopping point.”

They reply:

The Necessary Existent’s production of the various temporal effects He has brought about either can proceed from Him without an act subsisting in Him, or it cannot.

If it cannot, your position is invalid.

If it can, then His state when the Flood occurred was the same as His state when He sent Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Yet effects proceeded from Him at one of these times that did not occur at the other, although His state was the same in relation to both times.

If it is said:

“This is due to differing temporal events, such as celestial motions and planetary conjunctions.”

The reply is:

The same argument applies to the temporal events that necessitated the Flood as applies to those at the time of the Prophet’s mission and to other differing temporal events.

If the agent’s state is the same at all times, and what necessarily proceeds from Him is likewise the same, then distinguishing one time from another by something different amounts to determination without a determining factor.

If that is possible, then temporal events may proceed from Him after not having existed.