by analogy. Even if it existed or were hypothetically posited, it would not be permissible to place it on a par with Allah or make it His equal, for Allah is greater than everything. Even if it were permissible to equate Him with another, He would not be equated with it in any imperfection: He is not equated with deficient things. Thus, even if the ruling concerning the original case held, their analogy would fall under the words, “They attribute to Allah what they themselves dislike,” since they describe Him in terms they consider created beings to be above. How much more so when the original case does not even exist!

As for their second principle—that it is impossible for Him to become a complete cause after not having been one, and hence impossible for Him to bring anything into being—a complete cause, according to them, is one whose act must coexist with it. This principle, too, is false in both its negative and affirmative aspects, just as both the necessity and the impossibility of complete concomitance are false.

For it may be said: Either He was eternally a complete cause of all the events in the world, or He was not. If He was a complete cause, all those events must have existed from eternity, contrary to what everyone observes, perceives, and knows. If He was not eternally a complete cause, then it would be impossible for Him subsequently to become one, and He must therefore do nothing. Their position thus entails either the eternity of all temporal events or their nonexistence, and both conclusions are known to be false.

This follows only because of the two premises upon which they based the eternity of the world. They said that He acts only if He is such that the effect must coexist with Him, and that it is impossible for Him to become so after not having been so, because this would lead to an infinite regress. They may therefore be told: Whatever the cause of all these events may be, either it is a cause