any of the effects, making it inseparable from Him, then the temporal origination of everything other than Him is established—and that is exactly what we seek.

This is one of the arguments they advance for the world’s pre-eternity, yet it actually proves its origination. They say, “Acting is a perfection, and generosity is a perfection; therefore it is impermissible that the Creator, exalted be He, be deprived of these perfections from all eternity.”

We reply: Is perfection that He always acts, bringing things into being successively, or that the effect be co-eternal with Him? The latter is unquestionably false.

First, because it contradicts what is known by immediate intuition.

Second, because if you claim that a successive, time-bound act is not a perfection, and that only an act simultaneous with Him is, the consequence is that nothing would ever come to be.

Moreover, this can be countered by saying: Rather, acts whose kinds are continually renewed and will endure forever are more perfect than a single eternal act without any originated acts. Hence those who say that He was not acting until He created the heavens, and that thereafter He brings forth things one after another ad infinitum, speak better than those who say He has eternally been acting upon a single thing and performs nothing else; for a multiplicity of acts and effects is more perfect than their paucity. Thus it becomes clear that what they have ascribed to the Creator—namely, that this world is inseparable from Him and co-eternal with His eternity—is an attribute of deficiency, not of perfection.

The point here is that those who established the world’s origination by the origination of bodies, as mentioned earlier, said: Since the proof of the coming-to-be of contingent things rests solely on the occurrence of