this from all the ancient philosophers, just as they differed from the great majority of rational thinkers of every other school. Consequently, they contradicted themselves concerning the properties of contingent beings and faced questions they could not answer, as I have explained in my refutation of al-Arba'īn (The Forty) and elsewhere.

The claim that an effect may be simultaneous with its cause is intelligible only when that cause is a condition, not an agent. They say, for example: “I moved my hand, and the ring moved.” The movement of the hand is a condition for the movement of the ring, and a condition and that which depends upon it may necessarily accompany one another. The hand’s movement, however, is not an agent that brings the ring’s movement into being. The same applies to rays in relation to fire and the sun, and similar examples.

As for an agent, its product cannot conceivably be simultaneous with it, whether it acts voluntarily or is supposed to act without volition. Whether it is called an agent by essence, by nature, or however else it may be conceived, its product cannot conceivably be simultaneous with it, as the great majority of rational thinkers, earlier and later, have acknowledged. Aristotle and his followers did not say that the celestial sphere was a product of the Lord, nor that it was the effect of an efficient cause that brought its very being into existence. Rather, they claimed that it was eternal and necessary in itself, and that it had a final cause which it sought to resemble, as in the case of the movement of a beloved who must be emulated. In their view, the celestial sphere moves in order to resemble that cause. Hence they said:

“Philosophy is to resemble God as far as one is able.”

Their position—although it involves greater disbelief and ignorance of Allah than the position of Ibn Sīnā and his followers, and although their contradictions in metaphysics