On this assumption, then, consider someone’s statement—someone’s statement:

“The factors that complete the Creator’s causal efficacy in relation to the world are either all eternal or not.”

Do you mean the factors that complete His causal efficacy in relation to each individual thing in the world, or in relation to the world as a whole?

If you mean the first, they are not all eternal, and each one’s coming into existence depends upon a preceding originated event. Such an infinite regress is possible according to them.

If you mean the second, you are told: The world as a whole does not depend upon a specified set of factors to which this division could apply. Rather, one part of the world depends upon certain factors, and another part depends upon other factors. Each part depends upon originated factors, which in turn depend upon other factors. This entails an infinite regress in the succession of originated events, which you allow.

If, however, an infinite regress of effects means an infinite regress in causal efficacy as such—that causal efficacy as such depends upon causal efficacy as such, so that He brings nothing into existence until He brings something into existence—then this is undoubtedly impossible. It is an infinite regress in what completes an agent’s causal efficacy, and belongs to the same category as an infinite regress of causes.

But the impossibility of this entails that He did not begin acting after having done nothing at all. Thus, agency must be perpetual in kind, rather than any particular effect being perpetual. Accordingly, this does not establish that anything in the world is eternal. This is clear to anyone who reflects upon it.

An infinite regress may also have a third meaning: that His bringing a particular event into existence cannot occur until the complete cause of that particular event is realized. This would entail an infinite regress of originated events within a single event. This, too, is impossible by the agreement of all rational people.