They said: “Nor did the philosophers establish any proof that bodies are eternal. Rather, they established proofs that the Lord has never ceased to act, and that motion and time have always existed. Their principal argument is that the First possesses all the conditions of agency from eternity, so His action must necessarily accompany Him.”

They said: “It is impossible for events to come into being without a newly arising cause. It is impossible that the Lord should have remained inactive from eternity and that action should then have occurred without a newly arising cause. It is impossible for Him to become capable after not having been capable. And it is impossible for action to become possible after having been impossible, without a newly arising cause, thus passing from intrinsic impossibility to intrinsic possibility.”

They said: “If everything indispensable for an agent to act exists from eternity, the action must necessarily exist; for if it does not exist, it remains dependent upon some further condition. We have stated that everything indispensable for the agent to act has existed from eternity. If it is said that everything indispensable for the agent to act has existed, yet the action did not exist and only subsequently came into being without a cause, this would entail the existence of a contingent thing being favored over its nonexistence without a sufficient determining factor. For when a determining factor is sufficient, the alternative it favors must prevail. If that alternative does not prevail, then, if the action can either exist or not exist—and a contingent thing requires a determining factor—it must have such a factor for as long as its existence and nonexistence remain possible. Once the sufficient determining factor is present, the action’s existence becomes necessary; its existence and nonexistence are then no longer both possible.”