be said to him: If a body is at rest, then rest must either be an existent reality or entail an existent reality. In that case, the cause of that existent reality either necessitates it of itself—and the argument is carried through to its conclusion.

But someone who says, “The first body was at rest from eternity and then moved,” says here what those who maintain that bodies came into being say. For when they say, “Bodies and their motion came into being without a cause requiring them to come into being,” this opponent replies: “Rather, the bodies supposed to be eternal were at rest, and then their motion came into being without a cause requiring that motion to occur.”

This is the position of someone who says that the First is a body and that He comes to perform an act after not having performed it. He says: “Discussing the coming into being of an act subsisting in Him is like discussing the coming into being of an effect separate from Him.”

The theologians and speculative thinkers, both among those who face the qiblah and among others, disagreed over the existence of an eternal body.

One group held that an eternal body is impossible and that every body came into being. They disagreed about the one who brings bodies into being: did he bring them into being after not having done so, without any newly occurring cause whatsoever, or must there be a newly occurring cause? And do newly occurring things subsist in him, such as a newly occurring will, a newly occurring conception, or even a newly occurring act? They held two views on these questions.