of His necessitating causation through His own agency, for He is a complete cause whose effect must coexist with it from eternity. If that completeness is beginningless, then the effect of the effect must also be beginningless, and so on. If it comes into being, then something has arisen from the eternal, complete cause without a newly arisen cause. This contradicts their assertion that nothing can arise without a cause.

You thus face two alternatives, either of which invalidates your position. If you say, “He is a complete cause from eternity,” it follows that His effect cannot be delayed beyond Him. If you say, “He is not a complete cause,” it follows that His becoming a complete cause occurs without a newly arisen cause. You must therefore admit that events can arise without a cause.

Either alternative invalidates your position. For if His being a complete cause from eternity is disproved, nothing in the world can be beginningless. And if events can arise without a newly arisen cause, your argument is invalidated, and everything other than Him can have come into being.

If you say:

“He is a complete cause of the celestial sphere, but not of its movements,”

you would be told:

“He is the cause of the celestial sphere and of its movements, which occur successively, one after another. Was He a complete cause of these movements from eternity, or did His being their cause become complete successively, one movement after another?”

If you say:

“He is a complete cause from eternity,”

then you must accept either that all these movements coexist with Him from eternity, or that an effect is delayed beyond its complete cause. Both alternatives invalidate your position.

If you say:

“His being the cause of each movement became complete as that movement arose,”

you would be told:

“According to you, then, this completeness arose without a newly arisen cause. This entails that events can arise without a cause.”

This is clear to anyone who fully understands the matter; they have no way of rebutting it.