First: The same line of reasoning that applies to the origination of those events—motions, volitions, and conceptions—applies to the things that arise from them. Hence none of these events can be a complete cause of the others unless something new were to occur to Him whereby He would become a complete cause; yet, according to their own doctrine, no contingent occurrence ever takes place in Him. Consequently, He is never, at any moment, a complete cause of any contingent event.

Second: It must also be said that the first event cannot be what renders the agent a complete cause for the events that follow it. The completeness of the cause has to be present when the effect is present, whether one calls that completeness a “condition,” a “component,” the “absence of a hindrance,” or anything else. The principle under discussion is that a total cause accompanies its effect and that an effect accompanies its complete cause. If one imagined that part of what perfects the cause existed before the effect and then was absent when the effect occurred, it would follow that the complete cause was not present when the effect was present, and that the effect came to be in the absence of some of what makes the cause complete. This contradicts the very premise.

Accordingly, the total cause must be present when the effect is present; or, if you prefer, the fully operative agent must exist when the action exists; or, again, the complete effector must accompany its effect.

Objection: “It could be said that the Eternal One’s causation of the second event is conditioned upon the non-existence of the first, and that the non-existence of the first coincides with the coming-to-be of the second; thus the condition is not simply the occurrence of the first,”—much like those who claim that He has ever been speaking whenever He wills and acting by His will, bringing things into being one after another.