are beyond the scope of this discussion—did not involve the same self-contradiction in affirming an eternal contingent being as did the position of their later followers.

Thus, since this proposition is firmly rooted in the natural disposition of rational people, and merely knowing or being told that the heavens are created, fashioned, or produced entails knowing that they came into existence, it does not occur to anyone of sound natural disposition that they could be produced by an agent who made them while also being eternal, having always coexisted with that agent. Hence, only this small band of philosophers has made such a claim.

Furthermore, whatever necessarily entails temporal events cannot have as its agent a cause that necessitates by its very essence and entails its effect from eternity. For events occurring successively, one after another, do not exist in their entirety from eternity, nor is any individual event eternal. Rather, what is eternal is their continuing succession, one after another. A cause that necessitates by its very essence and entails its effect from eternity cannot have an effect that comes about successively, whether it proceeds from that cause through an intermediary or without one. For whatever occurs one after another arises successively, and therefore cannot be an effect coexisting with its cause from eternity.

This differs from saying that what coexists with it is the cause that necessitates by its very essence and acts successively. On this supposition, it would not, from eternity, be a cause necessitating by its very essence, nor a prior, complete cause of anything in the world. Thus, no created thing would coexist with it from eternity. Rather, the agent would produce its effects successively, and each effect would come into existence when the agent’s agency is complete.