through an eternal will, that is an innovation—something unknown to scholars and unconvincing to the generality of people, by which I mean those who have attained the level of dialectical reasoning. Rather, one should say that He wills a thing to exist at the time it exists, and does not will it to exist at any other time, as the Exalted says:

‘When We will a thing, We only say to it, “Be,” and it is.’ {40} [al-Nahl 40]

For, as we have said, there is nothing that compels the generality of people to say that He wills temporally originated things through an eternal will, except the speculative theologians’ mistaken notion that whatever has temporally originated events subsisting in it must itself be temporally originated.”

I say: These words come close to explicitly allowing that temporally originated events may subsist in the Lord. In short, this is a necessary consequence of their position. It refutes the doctrine of the eternity of the celestial spheres and exposes the unsoundness of much of what this philosopher advanced against the speculative theologians’ arguments. Indeed, it was their denial of this principle that gave him an opening against those he refuted. It has already been shown that every group, even if it denies this principle, is nonetheless committed to it elsewhere, and that it is a necessary consequence of the positions of all groups.

For, after raising objections to the speculative theologians’ argument from accidents—objections that were partly true and partly false, though the true part does not preclude holding that these created things came into being—this philosopher went on to say: