eternity in temporal terms, although it is prior to it causally, not temporally. They say that a complete cause and its effect coexist in time and necessarily accompany one another: no effect exists without a complete cause, and no complete cause exists without its effect accompanying it in time. Yet they acknowledge that events in the world occur successively, without anything newly arising from the First Originator that would make Him the cause of these successive events. In reality, their position amounts to saying that events arise without anyone bringing them into existence. Likewise, according to their principles, these events cease to exist after coming into existence without any cause necessitating their cessation. Opposing them were groups of speculative theologians who supposed that the effect of a fully operative cause could be delayed; that an agent endowed with power and choice favors one of two things within his power over the other without any determining factor; and that events have a beginning, having come into existence after not existing, without any newly occurring cause.

Neither group arrived at the middle position: a fully operative cause necessarily entails that its effect follows immediately upon its complete exercise of causation, neither accompanying that exercise nor occurring after a delay. As the Most High says:

“His command, when He wills a thing, is only to say to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.”

Thus He, glorified be He, brings everything into being, and it comes to be immediately upon His bringing it into being—not simultaneously with that act in time, nor after a delay. Similarly, becoming broken follows immediately upon the act of breaking; becoming severed follows immediately upon the act of cutting; and a divorce taking effect follows immediately upon its pronouncement, neither after a delay nor simultaneously with it in time. Those who maintain that there is a delay supposed that an infinite succession of events was impossible, which committed them to the conclusion that