This contention undermines their argument for the world’s past eternity and makes plain that God acts by His will and power, bringing about successive deeds one after another. That is the first of the two replies to al-Armawī’s objection.

The second reply is as follows. When al-Armawī says to al-Rāzī, “By ‘cause’ you must mean either a complete (sufficient) cause or the agent himself,” al-Rāzī could answer: “I have no need for such a division, for my proof remains sound without it.”

Among thinkers there are those who hold that contingent events come into existence only through a complete cause that necessitates their occurrence; this is the position adopted by most theologians, philosophers, and others. The majority of them add that the factor which tips the balance is the able, volitional Agent whose power and will bring the event into being—for whatever Allah wills occurs, and whatever He does not will does not occur. This is the doctrine of the Sunnis who affirm the divine decree and maintain that the world is originated.

Some, however, claim that His very essence necessarily produces all possibles without the mediation of will or power. This is the view of the “divine” philosophers who are eternalists, and their position entails that no new events ever take place. The necessitating cause they posit exists only in the mind, never in external reality—just like the “One” they also imagine and about which they assert that only one effect can proceed from it.