This involves a circle within a single entity and an infinite regress within that same entity, as when it is said: “This cannot come to be until it comes to be, and it cannot come to be until it comes to be.” Looked at in itself, it is one and the same thing; yet, once the plurality of becomings is considered, the outcome is both circularity and regress with respect to several instances. If the third becoming is made identical to the first, the result is circularity; if it is made something other than the first, the result is an infinite regress. For that reason, when one says, “He does not act until He acts, and He does not act until He acts,” if the third instance is the same as the first, the statement is circular, and if it is other than it, it is a regress. Such a scenario is undoubtedly impossible.

If, however, it is said, “He does not perform one act until He performs another act,” then it is not the very genus of agency that is newly originated, but only its particular instances. This is the well-known point of dispute, and the philosophers allow for such a view; it neither entails the eternity of anything in the cosmos, nor does it require that His influence upon a specific object be eternal.

Secondly, the discourse of Ibn Sīnā and his companions is invalid for two reasons. First, we say to him: Your position entails the occurrence of events without a producer. If it is impossible for events to arise from an eternal agent with no new cause, then your doctrine is even more impossible than ours; and if your doctrine is possible, then ours is all the more so. Hence the view to which you have fled is worse than the one from which you fled, for it implies that from an eternal, complete agent events issued forth without anything newly arising in Him or from Him, even though a complete agent never fails to produce any of its effects.

The second point is that this argument merely establishes that the Agent has never ceased acting; it contains nothing to show that He is a complete cause in