When it is said, “That single state necessitates the coming-to-be of the second event on condition that the first be absent,” the answer is: the events that issue from it are diverse, for the motions themselves are diverse; the motion of the ninth sphere alone is not what brings about all occurrences. Indeed, the motions peculiar to each and every heaven do not arise from that one state.

Accordingly, it produces different motions in succession and different events one after another. It is therefore impossible that it should have been, from pre-eternity, necessitating all of them, and equally impossible that something could newly arise within it that would render it a necessitating cause without any act on its part; for to claim that it necessitates the condition is no different from claiming that it necessitates what is conditioned by it. Those events, moreover, occur in a known, eternal substrate; hence whatever pre-eternally necessitates that substrate must also necessitate the consequent effects, one after another, while itself remaining in one and the same state from eternity past to eternity future.

An effect proceeds from and is inseparable from its cause. If the cause remains in a single, unvarying state, the effect must likewise remain in a single, unvarying state; otherwise the effect would exist without its cause.

This is, in fact, the real implication of their doctrine. Everything found in the effect comes from the cause; so if we suppose that the cause neither diversifies its action nor possesses varied attributes nor undergoes any change whatsoever, it follows that the effect must also be a single, undifferentiated entity in which nothing ever changes—contrary to plain observation. This conclusion is inescapable.

Their more astute adherents admit as much, for anyone who comprehends the true nature of their position sees that what they claim flatly contradicts sound reason. They have merely placed their hopes in certain speculative theologians, those innovators whom the early generations and leading scholars condemned because their discourse contains falsehood both legally and rationally. Such people have contradicted both revelation and reason and imagined that the Messengers reported that the Creator was—