But the untenability of their positions can be demonstrated on other grounds, without accepting the correctness of the theistic philosophers’ position. Rather, the positions of both groups are false and contradictory, and their falsity and contradiction are evident to clear reason.

If these theistic philosophers say that the world is contingent in itself, then there must be a necessarily existent being that is its efficient cause. The existence of something for which it longs is not sufficient to account for its existence. For whatever has no existence of itself has, of itself, neither attribute, longing, motion, nor anything else. You must therefore establish an originator of the contingent being before establishing its longing for something else. The question of whether it is eternal or came into being then remains a separate, subsequent inquiry.

[Fourth Argument]

It may be said: Their initial statement is:

“Some people hold that it necessarily follows from this—that is, from the world’s necessarily existing together with the First Cause—that the First Cause exercises no voluntary agency in the world’s existence, just as it exercises none in the existence of its own substance, since the world’s existence cannot be delayed beyond the existence of the First Cause…” and so on.

The reply to you is this: The will of the First Cause either requires its act of producing the world to occur later, or nevertheless allows that act to occur earlier. If will requires the object willed to come later, then the world—which longs and possesses will and longing—must likewise come later. For, according to you, the world is eternal and possesses eternal will and longing. Thus, if what is eternal cannot possess longing and will, your assertion that the world is eternal is invalid when coupled with the assertion that it longs.