from all eternity, with nothing that it necessitates, entails, or causes lagging behind it. Neither motion, which occurs progressively, nor any other temporal event occurring in succession is beginningless. Rather, each comes into being and is preceded by another. None, therefore, can be an effect of a beginningless complete cause, since no temporal event can be beginningless. Nor can the totality of temporal events exist from all eternity. Furthermore, whatever necessarily entails temporal events cannot exist except together with an individual temporal event or with their totality. Since neither can be beginningless, nothing that necessarily entails temporal events can be beginningless either.

Thus, neither any temporal event nor anything that necessarily entails temporal events can have a beginningless complete cause. Consequently, temporal events—whether taken collectively or individually—and whatever necessarily entails them cannot proceed from a beginningless complete cause. Hence, nothing that is never free of temporal events can proceed from a complete cause existing from all eternity. It follows that the celestial sphere, which coexists with temporal events, cannot be a complete cause existing from all eternity, without beginning. Were it beginningless, it would proceed from a beginningless complete cause. Thus, it can be beginningless only if its complete necessitating cause exists from all eternity; yet the existence of such a complete necessitating cause is impossible, just as its own beginninglessness is impossible.

If, however, it is said that what is beginningless neither coexists with temporal events nor necessarily entails them—for example, that what is beginningless consists of motionless entities constituting the first effect—then the reply is: either a new state can arise, whether in that effect, from it, or otherwise, or it cannot.