the same reasoning applies to any temporal event posited in relation to its cause as applies to an effect of the Necessary Existent. This is contrary to reason and sense perception. Whatever answer is given concerning the temporal events whose existence is admitted is also the answer in the case under discussion. In this, they must turn to the volition of the soul and demonstrate its absence from the Necessary Existent.

The difficulties with this are already known.

[Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary]

I say:

They may suppose that they can answer this counterargument by saying that daily temporal events are conditional upon one temporal event following another. This entails an infinite regress of effects, and an infinite regress of effects is not impossible according to them.

Their position, in essence, is that the eternal determining factor continually determines, while temporal events external to it arise one after another.

They may then identify this with the motion of the celestial sphere, saying that it is this motion that occurs successively.

The more discerning among them, such as Ibn Sīnā, recognized that this answer is false, and that it is impossible for one temporal event after another to arise from the Eternal without anything newly occurring. He therefore advanced an even more untenable claim, saying that motion does not come into existence successively, but is rather something perpetually existent, and that what comes into existence successively has no existence in external reality, but only in the mind.

This is a plain denial of the obvious, which I have discussed at length in the Commentary on al-Asbahāniyya.

The more discerning among them have acknowledged that reason rejects the successive occurrence of temporal events from an essence in which no temporal event subsists.

As for those among them who acknowledge that voluntary acts subsist in His essence, they may be told: “This is all the more indicative of the temporal origination of the things He produces.”

Both groups may be told: “If you admit this possibility, you have no proof that anything in the world is eternal. Thus, the invalidity of your argument becomes clear.”