the third approach: What do you mean by saying, “That by virtue of which an originator originates is either eternal or not”? Do you mean that whose presence necessitates the existence of the effect, or that by virtue of which He can act, such as His power and His other attributes? If he says, “I mean the first,” the reply is: That is not eternal, nor do we concede that its presence is required for the originator to originate. Even if we concede that it is indispensable, we do not concede that an infinite regress necessarily follows. If the second meaning is intended, that is more appropriate; but it does not necessitate the existence of the effect whenever it is present.

The fourth approach is that this argument turns on the following: if something is a complete cause, its effect must exist concurrently with it. If it is not a complete cause, no effect can proceed from it while it remains incomplete; nor can the cause subsequently become complete, since that would entail an infinite regress. It would then follow that it cannot begin to originate after not having originated. This line of argument therefore requires these premises to be assumed. Their aim is to establish the first alternative: that He is a complete cause, so His effect must exist concurrently with Him, and it is impossible for the effect to fail to accompany Him, or for Him to do something after not having done it.

The complete agent is the cause—the producer of the effect. They may say that this does not preclude His acting by choice, since His choice of a particular thing is a necessary concomitant of His essence. Were He not a complete cause, no act could proceed from Him, whether or not He were said to have become complete.

If that is so, they have no way of knowing that these premises apply to Allah except through mere analogy—an invalid analogy. For the Necessary Existent has no peer, no equal, and no likeness, such that it could be said that He