and al-Urmawī, among others, affirm a succession of effects. Indeed, the position of the former entails that the celestial sphere is the lord of everything beneath it, bringing events into being through the successive acts that subsist in it. Al-Abharī’s position, by contrast, entails that Allah is the Lord of all worlds, bringing everything into being through the successive acts that subsist in Him.

There is no doubt that the former position is unsound according to reason, just as it is unsound according to revelation. For if the celestial sphere is contingent, all its attributes and motions are contingent, and none of them can be actualized without a fully sufficient determining cause. If that fully sufficient determining cause exists from eternity, whatever it entails must also exist from eternity.

Furthermore, if that determining cause is in itself a complete cause of its effect, such that nothing new arises in it or from it, then nothing could proceed from it after not previously proceeding from it—whether in the celestial sphere or elsewhere, and whether continuous or intermittent. Nor could the celestial sphere’s perpetual motion proceed from such a cause, especially given the diversity of motions and moving entities, while they hold that this cause is simple in every respect and is a complete cause from eternity. Thus, diverse and newly arising things cannot proceed from it. Likewise, the motion of any contingent moving entity can persist only if the external cause that moves it persists. This is because, if the agent’s state when it brings this later thing into being is the same as its state when it brought that earlier thing into being, it would be impossible to single out this state, rather than the other, for distinction—as they themselves maintain.

If they say:

“This was only because the celestial sphere’s motion could not exist all at once, or because events could not all exist from eternity. Its emanation was therefore delayed because the recipients became ready only later.”