The discussion of this question is of the same kind as the discussion of the creation of human acts. Just as we know that Allah creates human acts, we know that He creates the motions of the celestial sphere, if those motions are assumed to be voluntary. And if they are assumed to be voluntary, the case is stronger still, for the Qadariyyah dispute the former but do not dispute the latter.

One cannot object: “These philosophers, such as Aristotle and his followers, may approach the voluntary motions of the celestial spheres in the same way as the Qadariyyah, who do not say that Allah creates human acts.”

The reply is, first, that this is not their position. Rather, they hold that the acts of living creatures, along with all other contingent things, proceed from the Necessary Existent. This is what appears in the works of those who transmitted their position, such as Ibn Sīnā and others like him.

They may also be told: Either you allow a living being to originate acts without an external cause necessitating their occurrence—I do not mean without a newly arising maqsūr, but without something necessitating the act—or you do not.

If you do not allow this of a living being, you must concede that the celestial sphere, which in your view is alive, cannot originate its motion except through a separate cause that necessitates its occurrence. It is not enough for that cause merely to be something the sphere seeks to resemble.

The question of how that cause comes to necessitate the motion is then the same as the question of how the sphere’s motion originates. It follows that there must be an efficient cause above the celestial sphere that brings temporal occurrences into being. This invalidates their position, since they hold that above the celestial sphere there is neither motion nor action of any kind.

But if they allow a living being to originate acts without a newly arising cause from something other than itself,