These scholars said:

This is the principal argument of these philosophers. Its underlying principle is that anything that comes into being must have a newly arising cause. That something should come into being without a newly arising cause is self-evidently impossible to reason.

For this reason, the various answers offered by the speculative theologians were all unsound. Some said that the determining factor is knowledge; others said it is will; others said it is simply the fact that He possesses power; and others said that the determining factor is action becoming possible after having been impossible—not its impossibility from eternity—and so forth.

They said that these answers are invalid for two reasons:

First, if everything mentioned existed from eternity, it falls under the first alternative; if it did not exist from eternity, it falls under the second. We have already said that if everything required for causal efficacy is eternal, the effect must necessarily be eternal. If, however, some of those requirements are not eternal and subsequently come into being, this entails the existence of a contingent thing being favored over its nonexistence without a determining factor, and events coming into being without anything bringing them about. For if that which completes the cause were brought into being, while the cause had not been complete from eternity, this would have arisen without a cause.

“The second reason”: power, will, knowledge, and eternity itself bear the same relation to the time when the world came into being as they do to what precedes and follows it. It is therefore impossible for these to necessitate its existence at that particular time rather than before or after it.

Al-Rāzī said in his “Great Book”:

“The brilliant answer is to say: the soul was eternal and perpetually in motion. Then, from those successive motions, a particular attribute arose that caused bodies to come into being. This establishes a newly arising cause that necessitated bodies coming into being at that particular time. Accordingly, bodies came into being, as is entailed by the arguments of the speculative theologians; and the Agent has never ceased to act, since the soul, which is His effect, is eternal, as is entailed by the arguments of