fully present from eternity or not. If it is not, it can come to be only through a cause; the same argument then applies to that cause as to the first, leading to an infinite regress, which is impossible. If it is fully present, then it is necessarily known that, once a cause exists together with everything required for its causal efficacy to be complete, its effect cannot fail to occur. Thus, the world cannot lag behind the Creator.”

Both alternatives can likewise be answered by these two approaches. As for the first, we say: We do not concede this inference if the cause is not fully present, but rather what is absent is the very causal activity said to subsist in it—creation, speech, and will—or the presence of a condition and the absence of an impediment have not been realized. All this belongs to the completeness of the cause. By “cause,” he means the totality of factors whose existence entails the existence of the effect: those factors which the effect must accompany and of which it is a necessary consequence. If these factors are not present, the cause is not present.

But it may be said: if these factors were not all present, but some were missing, it would not be the first cause that was acted upon, so as to entail