Creation entails coming into being and determination; it thus includes both bringing into existence and determining. Once you know that a contingent being must have a determining factor that makes its existence necessary—otherwise it would not exist, but would remain nonexistent according to the sounder of the two views, or remain undecided between existence and nonexistence according to the other—you know that an originated thing must have an agent through whom the effect has no need of another and through whom it comes into being. Otherwise, it would remain dependent on something else. If its originator is likewise supposed to be originated, the effect does not become independent through him, because that originator depends on something else. Whatever depends on him therefore depends on that other thing; all the more so is the first thing dependent on it. Originated things can therefore exist only through an agent independent of all else. Since every originated thing depends on something else, originated things can exist only through an eternal agent who is not originated. These are several ways of establishing the existence of the eternal being whose existence is necessary in itself.

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This argument can also be formulated in terms of independence and dependence, being created and not being created, power and powerlessness, perfection and deficiency, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, and other such contrasts, by saying:

Every existing thing is either independent in itself of everything else or dependent on something else. Whatever depends on something else can exist only through that which is independent of everything else. Thus, the existence of that which is independent of everything else follows on either supposition.