by another? This is what some adherents of philosophy maintain when they say that the celestial sphere is beginningless and contingent, caused by the Necessary Existent without beginning or end. This is the view rejected by the vast majority of rational people.

They say that a thing cannot be produced and fashioned while coexisting with its agent without beginning or end. They also say that a contingent thing, which admits of both existence and nonexistence, must exist at one time and not exist at another. As for what exists perpetually, rational people generally regard it as necessary in existence, not as a contingent thing that admits of existence and nonexistence.

This is a point on which all philosophers agreed, including Ibn Sīnā and his followers. Yet Ibn Sīnā contradicted himself: in his discussion of proving the existence of the Necessary Existent, he claimed that a contingent thing could be beginningless and eternal while remaining contingent. A group of later thinkers, such as al-Rāzī and others, agreed with him. This entailed difficulties that they were unable to answer, as has been explained at length elsewhere. Accordingly, contingency and temporal origination necessarily accompany one another: everything contingent is temporally originated, and everything temporally originated is contingent.

As for supposing a contingent thing that is produced and whose existence is necessary through another, although it is not