The maxim that whatever is never devoid of temporal events must itself be originated, if sound, necessarily entails the origination of everything apart from God; and if it is unsound, it establishes neither the origination of bodies nor of anything else.

Accordingly, the claim that their proof demonstrates the origination of bodies to the exclusion of all other things is false. For, on the first assumption, every entity that is not free of temporal events is originated—its coming-to-be preceded by non-existence. What comes to be after not being cannot proceed from an eternal Being that acts by the sheer necessity of His essence from pre-eternity, for a Being who acts necessarily from pre-eternity would produce an eternally necessary effect, not one preceded by non-existence.

Whether the effect arises through an intermediary or without one is immaterial: on this view it is impossible for the Necessary Existent in Himself to be an eternally self-necessitating cause. Once this is dismissed, the existence alongside Him of any coeternal being—whether called an intellect, a soul, or anything else—is likewise impossible. Were one to posit an eternal contingent intellect, it would have to issue from a complete, eternal cause that acts necessarily by its own essence from pre-eternity, and its effect would have to remain with it eternally, never parting from it. On such an assumption, no new temporal events could appear after not having been.

Thus, once it is granted that temporal events have a beginning and that an infinite regress of past events is impossible, it necessarily follows that the Creator acts by His own volition and that no other eternal being exists alongside Him in pre-eternity.

It is therefore clear that, if the arguments advanced by these dialecticians for the origination of bodies and accidents are valid, they entail the origination of everything besides God. It also becomes evident that the early masters among these dialecticians were more astute than their later followers and more forceful in rebutting the philosophers and others, and that the criticisms levelled against them by later dialecticians are baseless.