It would make the Necessary Being dependent upon what is merely possible in existence; once this point is clarified, it undermines the very foundation of their doctrine and becomes, in its own right, a fourth independent refutation.

For the essence of their claim is that the celestial sphere is inseparable from the Essence of God Most High: the Lord cannot exist without the sphere, just as the sphere cannot exist without Him; the two are, they say, mutually implicative. This is precisely the assertion that His effect is a condition for His existence and that His existence without that effect is impossible—a statement that subjects the One who is necessary in Himself to need of what is contingent in itself. Such a claim is impossible.

These issues are treated at length elsewhere; we have mentioned them here only to draw attention to their principal argument. Refuting that argument may entail the collapse of their entire position and serve as evidence for the truth of what the Messengers—may God’s blessings be upon them—have conveyed.

Second approach: One might say that one of the premises of this argument is the impossibility of an infinite regress, yet you yourselves allow such a regress while your opponents deny it. Accordingly, on your own principles the argument is coercive rather than demonstrative; it yields no certain knowledge and therefore fails to provide the conclusion you seek.

This is so if “infinite regress” is taken to mean a regress in effects rather than in their causal origin. If it is understood as an infinite regress in the very principle of causation, no one maintains such a view; this is what your leading authorities intend by “regress” in this context, even though some people understand it in the former sense. In that case the argument proves only the perpetual existence of a class of temporal events, and whoever says that did not