It was said that, prior to that moment, the world was not merely possible but positively impossible, and that only then did it become possible. Others maintained that the Omnipotent, volitional Agent can prefer one of two equally possible contingents over the other without any determinant at all. Al-Rāzī then exposed the invalidity of these answers in the aggregate, for their sum amounts to claiming that everything indispensable for bringing the world into existence was already present from pre-eternity. He also refuted each reply in detail, a discussion we need not reproduce here.

He went on to say: Our answer is that, if what you have asserted were sound, nothing in the world would ever change; for the eternal perpetuity of the Necessary Existent entails the perpetual existence of the first effect, and the perpetuity of the first effect entails the perpetuity of the second, and so on through all subsequent levels. It would follow that no change at all occurs in the world, a conclusion plainly contrary to sensory experience.

He further remarked: If an objector were to ask, “Why may it not be said that the Necessary Existent is perpetually diffusing His effusion, yet the actual production of an effect depends on the preparedness of the recipients, and that these varying states of preparedness depend upon celestial motions and planetary conjunctions?”