Since temporal events are possible, and every possible thing depends on that which is necessary in itself, it follows that the originator of these events is the Necessary Being Himself. If the one who brings them into existence is the Necessary in Himself, it is impossible that He be their complete cause from pre-eternity, for a complete cause necessarily entails its effect. Thus all events would have to issue from an eternal, complete cause—and this is untenable, whether one imagines that their entire totality emerged from Him in pre-eternity, or that one particular event did so, or that they issued one after another, as has already been made clear. It is inherently impossible for their aggregate, or any individual event among them, to be eternal; and the fact that the species comes to be successively, one element after another, precludes its originator from being an eternal cause. An eternal cause is accompanied by its effect, whereas what is newly originated cannot accompany what is eternal in pre-eternity. Moreover, the complete cause of each event exists only when the event itself exists; otherwise an event would arise from a complete cause without any new factor completing it at the moment of its occurrence. To claim that the cause of temporal events is both complete and eternal is therefore to combine two mutually exclusive propositions.

The explanation of this and the full argument have already been presented. By the same reasoning, if existence is divided into the self-sufficient and the needy, and we say that the needy must depend on the self-sufficient, then—since temporal events are needy—it follows that they must proceed from the Self-Sufficient. Or, if one divides existence into the Sustainer (al-Qayyūm) and that which cannot sustain itself, the latter depends on the Sustainer; temporal events depend on the Sustainer as well, and the demonstration proceeds accordingly.