and His power, since His second act is conditional upon the first, for temporal acts can only occur successively. He does not necessitate any of those acts by His very essence, nor any of the things produced through them. This entails neither the eternity of any particular act nor the eternity of any particular thing produced—neither a celestial sphere nor anything else. He brings about all the temporal occurrences and changes in the world one after another, through His acts occurring one after another. Each day He is engaged in a matter.

This differs from their saying, “He is a complete cause that necessarily entails its effect,” while holding that some of those effects can only come into being gradually. This combines mutually incompatible claims, like saying, “His effect accompanies Him; His effect does not accompany Him.”

If they say, “He necessitates the celestial sphere and the fundamental constituents of the world by Himself, but does not necessitate newly arising temporal occurrences by Himself; rather, His necessitating them is conditional upon the temporal occurrences preceding them,” the reply is: This is what your position truly amounts to. In that case, He Himself does not necessitate any temporal occurrence, whether the first or the second, either through an intermediary or without one. This is what was to be established. Thus, claiming that He necessitates by His very essence while temporal occurrences arise from Him, with or without an intermediary, combines two contradictions.

Moreover, this position invalidates your claim that He necessitates the world by His very essence. For they say that the world cannot subsist without motion, and that motion is its form, without which it would cease to exist. If His necessitating the world without motion is impossible, and His necessitating motion from eternity is impossible, then He necessitates neither the world nor motion. For something whose being brought into existence depends upon a condition cannot be brought into existence unless its condition is also brought into existence. Yet bringing its condition into existence is impossible on their premises; therefore, bringing the thing itself into existence is impossible. This is because they maintain that the Creator has no act