and they denied this of the First only because, according to Aristotle and his followers, He is not a body. Their only proof of this is that a body cannot undergo infinite motion: since a body is finite, they argue, it cannot undergo infinite motion.

This argument is their mainstay, yet it is sophistical and among the most unsound of arguments. There is a difference between what continues indefinitely through time, occurring successively, and what is infinite in magnitude. The dispute concerns whether a body can remain perpetually in motion without end, not whether the body itself has an infinite magnitude. What comparison is there between the two? This is discussed at length elsewhere.

They may be told:

For temporal occurrences to proceed from an agent in whom nothing new arises must be either possible or impossible. If it is possible, then all temporal occurrences can proceed from the First without anything new arising in Him, as some speculative theologians and others maintain, including the Muʿtazila, the Kullābiyya, and others. If it is impossible, their claim that temporal occurrences perpetually proceed from Him, although nothing new arises in Him, is invalid. This is even more unsound.

If they say:

“Those people singled out certain times for things to come into existence, without any new cause arising from the agent,”

they may be told:

“You have made all temporal occurrences take place without any new cause arising from the agent.”

If you ask them:

“How can He bring things into existence after not having done so, without any new intention, knowledge, or power arising?”

they will ask you:

“How, then, can temporal occurrences arise perpetually without any new intention, knowledge, or power arising—indeed, without these even existing at all?”

Yet you say:

“Perceptions and volitions arise anew in the celestial sphere,