its requisites and the incidental occurrences through which its cause first became complete at that specific moment; for once a cause is complete, its effect cannot be delayed.
We therefore say to them: It necessarily follows that the very completion of the complete cause for what takes place on a given day must itself have occurred on that same day. Yet that completion is itself something produced on that day; accordingly, its own cause—or the completion of its cause—must likewise be something produced on that day, and so on ad infinitum. Hence every event attains a complete cause only at the instant of its occurrence. From this several defects in their doctrine become evident.
First, if none of the events possesses an eternal complete cause, but rather acquires a complete cause only upon coming into existence—as their statement demands—then no event issues from the Being who necessitates by His very essence and who, by definition, would be an eternal complete cause. It is thus established that the producer of events cannot be an eternally complete cause in relation to its effect—precisely what we set out to prove. Whoever ponders this point with understanding and is familiar with their school will recognize that it decisively invalidates their position; indeed, the more one rephrases the argument, the clearer and more compelling it becomes.
Their claim that the First Emanator—who necessitates by His essence—is an eternal complete cause while successive events nonetheless proceed from Him combines two mutually exclusive propositions, for a complete cause is accompanied by its effect and the effect cannot be deferred. This contradiction holds whether one contends, as some of them do, that the celestial sphere proceeds from Him without any intermediary, or asserts, as others maintain, that it proceeds through the First Intellect. All of them agree, however, that what moves the celestial sphere is the Soul, prompted by the ever-renewed perceptions and yearning volitions that arise within it. We therefore say: these contingent phenomena—whether they are the motions, the volitions, or