; otherwise, one possibility would prevail without a determining factor, the effect would lag behind its complete cause, and a contingent thing would exist without a fully determining factor. All of this is impossible. It is therefore impossible for Him to cause any temporal event from eternity, or to cause from eternity anything that necessarily entails temporal events, for something cannot exist without what it necessarily entails. Thus, anything produced that necessarily entails temporal events cannot be eternal.

If it is said, “His essence necessitates the second temporal event on condition that the first has ceased,” the reply is:

“He does not, then, perpetually necessitate any single thing, so none of the things He produces can be eternal alongside Him.”

A further reply is:

“This can only be so if His essence has successive states that account for the differences between the things He produces. But if it is assumed that no successive states subsist in His essence, and that its state when a temporal event occurs is the same as before it, then His producing successive temporal events external to Himself is even more impossible than His producing a particular temporal event. If they regard the latter as impossible, the former is all the more so.”

Whenever successive states subsist in the essence, every argument they advance for the eternity of anything in the world is invalidated. The eternity of anything in the world is also impossible if whatever is produced must have an agent, and what is produced by a temporally occurring act can only be temporal. This is discussed at length elsewhere.