Thus, affirming a complete determiner entails the nullification of the claim that the world is pre-eternal while nevertheless bound to temporal events. Such a claim would have been conceivable only if the effect neither entailed those events nor was susceptible to them—even though that, too, is impossible on other grounds, such as the impossibility of an effect’s co-existence with its agent.

This is clarified when someone objects, “The First Cause may be a complete determiner for the celestial spheres but not a complete determiner for the spheres’ motions; rather, one motion after another proceeds from Him.” We reply: for motions to issue successively from a complete determiner is impossible. Some new states must have arisen in Him that necessitated the occurrence of those motions, so He would not be a complete determiner for any of the motions. And if He is not a complete determiner for any of the motions, He cannot be a complete determiner for that which entails them. For if He determined them while no motion existed, the effect would have to accompany Him devoid of motion, whereas by hypothesis it necessarily involves motion—an obvious contradiction.

Should it be said that He necessitates only a single motion, we answer that the perpetual, pre-eternal motions are not distinguished one from another; their individual instances have ever been in succession. Hence it is impossible for Him to be a complete determiner for one of them to the exclusion of the rest in pre-eternity, since none of them is eternal in itself, and it is likewise impossible for Him to be a complete determiner for all of them in—