Now, transient events come in succession, one after another, and it is impossible for such a sequence to arise from an eternal, all-sufficient cause. Their argument therefore collapses, their claim that the universe is without beginning is void, and it becomes evident that everything other than God can come into existence, while the world’s emergence from an eternal, intrinsically necessitating cause is impossible—that being precisely what we set out to show.

It is likewise clear that no event can occur except through an agent who brings things about step by step—even were one to suppose that the agent does not act by will. How much stronger, then, is the case once it has been established that events can proceed only from a volitional agent through choices that subsist in Him.

Because the universe is inseparably bound to ever-new occurrences, the existence of what entails them without the entailed is inconceivable. The universe, therefore, cannot emanate from a being that necessitates by its very essence; its pre-eternity is impossible, and so too is the pre-eternity of any of its components.

For whatever is imagined to be eternal could have issued only from such an intrinsically necessitating agent—whether that agent be conceived as a bare essence or as one who necessitates by will. In either case, the necessitation—namely, the influence, entailment, and specific act that brings that particular effect into being from pre-eternity—would itself have to be eternal, enduring with the everlastingness of the Lord. Yet what follows from this is merely the genus of action, not any single, determinate act, because action can be conceived only as occurring piecemeal, moment by moment. A specific, perpetual entity—whether it be linked to temporal events or not—cannot be classified as an “act” at all, and such a thing can come about only through choice. Indeed, it can proceed only from a being who selects one thing after another; that being can never be devoid of volition, nor can it be an eternal, all-sufficient cause. All the more impossible, therefore, is the notion that absence of choice could coexist with its being an eternal, all-sufficient cause.