—or the perfect effector, the complete determiner, and the like. It makes no difference whether one says that He acts without power and will, or with a power and will that unfailingly realize what they intend, or invokes any other notion that makes His act proceed from an agent whose effect is inseparable from Him. Now, if His pre-eternity necessarily implied the presence of such a complete determiner, the existence of that determiner from all eternity would be impossible. For if its immediate effect were free of temporal events—and the effect of that effect likewise—then nothing in the universe would ever be contingent, a conclusion flatly contradicted by sensory experience, whether one assigns that effect to motionless intellects or to quiescent bodies. On either view, if what issues directly from the first cause contains no events, then what issues from that second level must also contain none; otherwise events would arise from a source in which no events are found.

The second possibility is that its effect does include events. This too is impossible, because those events would still proceed from the first agent. One would then have to say that the events are either inseparable from their substrate or supervene upon it after previously not existing—both alternatives being untenable.

As for the latter: for events to occur after nonexistence is itself a new occurrence that demands a new cause, yet we have assumed that no new cause issues from the agent. The origination of events without a fresh cause is therefore impossible.

If, instead, it is claimed that the agent necessarily entails events—as they contend regarding the celestial sphere—we answer that whatever necessarily entails events cannot subsist apart from them. Consequently, its originator must also bring into existence the inseparable events that are a prerequisite for it.