they argued from the necessary beginninglessness of time and motion—the argument from the formal cause—and from the necessary beginninglessness of matter. For everything that comes into being is preceded by the possibility of its existence, and this possibility must have a substrate. Thus, everything that comes into being is received by matter capable of receiving it. As for the “final cause,” it is of the same kind as the “efficient cause.”

The response to them is that these arguments support only the position of the early generations and the leading scholars, as explained above, and also demonstrate the falsity of their own position.

As for the beginninglessness of “agency”—meaning that He has always been acting—the response is: This expression is ambiguous. By an agent, you mean one whose effect coexists with him in time. If He is an agent in this sense, His effect must coexist with Him, and His action cannot come later. This is your principal argument. Yet an agent, according to rational people generally, your predecessors, and even yourselves outside this discussion, is one who does something and thereby brings it into being. Understood in this sense, the effect cannot coexist with Him. Rather, everything He brings about must come after Him. Nothing He brings about, therefore, shares His beginninglessness; everything other than Him comes into being.

People then take two approaches here.

“Some” say that everything He brings about must come after Him, and that He must remain inactive before subsequently acting. This is the position of the adherents of innovated speculative theology among the religious communities—the Jahmiyyah, the Mu'tazilah, and those who follow their path. This denial contradicts continuous agency and therefore contradicts what those arguments entail.

“The second” approach is to say that He has always been bringing one thing into being after another. Everything other than Him thus comes into being after not having existed, while He alone possesses beginninglessness and eternity. He is “the First,” beginningless and eternal, with nothing else sharing this with Him; and He has always been bringing one thing into being after another.