The eternalist philosophers are bewildered on this point. Whoever among them discusses it falls into contradiction because of the unsound principle on which they build: that temporal events proceed from a cause that necessarily entails its effect, whether through an intermediary or without one. This is impossible; indeed, it combines two contradictories. A complete cause cannot be temporally separated from any of its necessary effects, nor from the necessary effects of those effects. Yet temporal events occur later, so they cannot be its necessary effects or the necessary effects of its effects. To regard them as such is therefore contradictory.

If they are bewildered about how temporal events proceed from Him in the first place, what, then, of His willing them and knowing them?

His assertion that the negationist theologians have no proof beyond the argument already mentioned—that whatever temporal events subsist in must itself have come into being—and his refutation of their proof on this point apply with even greater force to him. For the only proof the philosophers offer for this is one that negates attributes altogether. Their position on this is utterly false and contradictory, as has been explained elsewhere. Yet his own words entail affirming the attributes.

If, then, one of their principles is that what comes into being may subsist in what is eternal, while attributes subsist in the Necessary, Eternal Existent, the objection he presses against the negationist theologians applies all the more forcefully to him.

He said:

“If it is asked, ‘On what basis, then, is the attribute of speech affirmed of Him?’

We reply: ‘It is affirmed on the basis that the attribute of knowledge subsists in Him, as does the attribute of power to bring things into existence. For speech is nothing more than the speaker performing an act that signifies