They are all agreed—on the strength of the very proof they advance—that had the world been eternal, its Agent would necessarily entail His act. Yet the world entails temporal events, and for something that contains such events to issue from an Agent whose act accompanies Him by necessity is impossible. Should one imagine that He first necessitated the world and then introduced events into it, that too would be impossible, for it would require the occurrence of events without a newly arising cause—something we have already shown to be untenable.
Put differently: if the occurrence of events without a new cause were admissible, the world itself could have begun, and the claim that it must be eternal would fall to the ground. If, however, such occurrence is impossible, the assertion of the world’s eternity is likewise invalid, for temporal events cannot proceed from an eternal necessitating cause. Thus, on either assumption, the philosophers’ contention that the world is necessarily eternal collapses, and with it their proof for its pre-eternity.
The same reasoning applies here: if an infinite regress of events is impossible, the world must be originated; and if it is possible, every part of the world could be produced by a prior event, so the proof that any part of it is eternal is nullified and the claim of its necessary pre-eternity fails on both counts.
This line of argument establishes the origination of every component of the cosmos without requiring us to say that the Lord only became able or became acting after previously not being so. It accords with the creed of the Salaf and the leading imams: it negates neither the divine acts that subsist in Him nor His attributes, and it does not render Him inactive with respect to His acts or the attributes of perfection. It posits no event without a corresponding new cause, nor does it prefer one possibility over another without a determinant. Rather, it unites sound rational proofs—free of contradiction—with transmitted texts that endorse what reason affirms, demonstrating that the Lord has always been and will ever remain.