contradictory assertions?! For they have taken what they claim to be part of a cause of temporally originated events and asserted that knowing it entails knowing all particular events. Yet concerning what they regard as the complete cause of everything, whether temporally originated or otherwise, they say that complete knowledge of it does not entail knowledge of every temporally originated event. Moreover, after establishing the existence of the celestial soul, they still need to establish that the celestial sphere’s movement causes anything to come into being. Even if this is conceded or established by proof, they cannot claim that it is a complete cause: they themselves agree on this, as do the adherents of the revealed religions.
How, then, can they make knowledge of what is not a complete cause of temporally originated events entail knowledge of their particulars, while saying that complete knowledge of what is their cause does not entail knowledge of them?
Furthermore, if the celestial sphere’s movement proceeds from the Lord, with or without an intermediary, and He knows Himself, His effects, their necessary consequences, and the necessary consequences of those consequences—all of which are His effects, with or without an intermediary—then either He knows them individually and in detail, or He does not know them in detail. If He knows them in detail, He knows their necessary consequences, and thus knows all temporally originated events individually and in detail.
If He does not know them in detail, then He surely has a stronger claim to knowledge of the celestial sphere’s movements than the celestial soul has to knowledge of everything that occurs on earth. For these earthly events are more varied than the celestial sphere’s movements. Knowledge of those movements is therefore closer to universal knowledge. And He, exalted is He, is more perfect in creating them—even through an intermediary—than the celestial soul is in bringing about events on earth.
Furthermore, the celestial soul’s knowledge of these movements is either a perfection or an imperfection. If it is an imperfection, the higher realm should be held free of it; if it is a perfection, then its Creator is more entitled to it than the soul itself.
Furthermore, those movements, together with the soul’s conceptions and volitions, are all effects produced