If one maintains that the Agent necessarily produces its effects by its very essence from all eternity, then every one of those effects must likewise have existed from all eternity; nothing new could ever arise—an outcome that flatly contradicts what we witness with our own eyes. Should someone instead claim that its causal efficacy depends on a contingent occurrence external to itself, exactly the same question confronts the origin of that occurrence, and its production becomes equally impossible. Thus, whichever option they adopt, they are driven to the view that temporal events have no true originator.
They are also compelled to concede that this Agent cannot be self-existent, for whatever is necessary in and of itself must be wholly independent of anything else. If it needs something besides itself in order to act, it is not independent in every respect—especially when the act is deemed an intrinsic corollary of its very essence yet still waits upon something external. In that case the entailments of its essence would hinge on another, and since the existence of what entails cannot be separated from what is entailed, its own existence would then depend on that other. Anything whose being is contingent on something else is not necessary in itself; their position therefore entails that the Agent is neither self-existent nor a producer of anything—whether by intrinsic necessity or by any other mode.
Moreover, if its essence is insufficient to generate new occurrences, it must depend in that matter on sheer non-existence, for events cannot arise from any agent other than itself. And if reliance on an existing other is impossible, reliance on what does not exist is even more impossible, for the non-existent can neither exert influence nor constitute any part of an effective cause.
They further assert that their claim of the world’s pre-eternity is meant to deny partners to God, arguing that if His act were nothing but His own essence, fully self-sufficient, the act would have to be eternal; whereas if it were temporal, it would necessarily depend on something other than Him.