with its cause in time, as Ibn Sīnā and his followers maintain.

Another view is that the effect must temporally lag behind its cause and the latter’s causal action, as most theologians maintain.

A third view is that the effect follows upon the causal action: it neither coexists with it in time nor is delayed beyond it. This is the correct view, as Allah Most High says:

“Our word to a thing when We intend it is only that We say to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.”

(al-Nahl: 40)

Hence one says, “I divorced the woman, and she became divorced,” and “I freed the slave, and he became free.” Thus emancipation and divorce follow upon the acts that effect them; they neither coincide with those acts nor occur after a delay.

It was also shown that maintaining that an effect coincides with its cause, as these philosophizers do, entails that nothing that comes into being has an agent, and that nothing comes into being in the world. Conversely, the view of those who maintain a delay entails that a complete cause does not entail its effect; rather, an event occurs without a newly arising cause. This is discussed at length elsewhere.

The point here is that the reply he has presented is taken from Ibn Sīnā’s words. Despite its invalidity, the most it establishes is that the existence of an effect may coincide with the existence of