Furthermore, sound reason judges the claim impossible. If the possibility of acting belongs to Him by His very Essence, yet is alleged to have arisen after previously not existing, the assertion is impossible for two reasons.

First, it would require possibility to appear after impossibility with no cause that made Him capable—an implication that strips the Lord of a perfection in pre-eternity and alleges that this perfection emerged from non-existence without any cause. Both aspects are impossible, for His perfection is inseparable from His Essence, and His being powerful is likewise intrinsic to Him. Were His power not essential, it would be an accident, making His very capability dependent on something other than Himself. Should that “other” be His own effect, a vicious prior circle would follow, for He cannot act upon the effect unless He is already capable. If He derived His capacity from the effect—and the effect cannot confer capacity unless it was first empowered by Him—it would follow that He is not capable until the other makes Him capable, and neither of them would possess any power at all.

Moreover, reason plainly shows the absurdity of supposing that an effect could render its agent capable or even make it an agent, for everything the effect possesses comes from the agent, not from itself. If the agent were only powerful through the empowerment of its effect, then it would never be powerful in any respect, and the effect itself would never come into existence—let alone be powerful, or capable of empowering its own agent.

Likewise, if one were to posit two eternal or necessary beings, each becoming necessary and powerful only through the empowerment of the other, reason would categorically deem this impossible and expose the same prior circularity: this one is not capable until that one empowers him, and that one is not capable until this one empowers him; thus neither of them would ever be capable at all.