the Ash'ariyya maintain.

Others hold that preference is given because it is more fitting to give preference. This is the position of the Karrāmiyya.

The third view is that a complete cause entails the existence of its effect immediately afterward, neither simultaneously with it nor after a delay, as Allah Most High says:

“When We will something to be, all We say to it is, ‘Be!’ and it is.”

(Al-Nahl: 40)

On this view, everything other than the Lord must have a beginning, since it is preceded by the exercise of causal efficacy and does not exist at the same time as that exercise. An agent endowed with power and will entails, when its power and will are present, the existence of the object of that power and will. Power and will are present before their object exists; and when it exists, they entail its existence. This is the position of most proponents of affirmation.

Accordingly, a distinction must be drawn between the existence of the cause, the acting agent, and the causal agent at the time when the effect exists—which is indispensable—and the existence in time of the cause understood as the act and the exercise of causal efficacy. It is the latter that is followed by what is produced and caused, namely the effect.

Some distinguish between the causal action of an agent endowed with power and choice and that of a necessitating cause. They claim that the former can occur only with a delay before the effect, whereas the latter can occur only with the effect existing simultaneously with its cause.