If it is said, “The beginningless entity is something that does not serve as an intermediary for anything else,” the reply is: That entity must be capable of acquiring new states. For it is necessarily known, and agreed upon by rational people, that new relations and correlations can arise for Allah, Mighty and Majestic. All the more, then, is this possible for anything other than Him. If that entity is capable of acquiring such states, new states can arise for it just as they arise for other contingent beings. For it is not impossible for temporal events to proceed from Allah, either through an intermediary or without one. If, then, that entity is receptive to such states, and such things can proceed from the Maker, temporal events can arise from it or within it after not having existed.

The explanation of their coming into being is then the same as that of everything else that proceeds from Him and comes into being. Yet this is impossible with a complete cause that necessarily entails its effect. This compelling proof thus demonstrates that the First cannot be a complete cause of anything in the world. In this respect, there is no difference between the celestial sphere and anything else, whether that other thing is postulated to be a body or something incorporeal, and whether it is postulated to entail temporal events within itself or proceeding from it—as maintained by the eternalist philosophers, such as al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, others like them, and their Greek predecessors.

They say that the celestial sphere necessarily entails beginningless temporal events, and that the intellects and souls necessarily entail the temporal events that proceed from them. Each of these therefore coexists with temporal events and cannot precede them, even though all of this is an effect of that which necessitates its effects by its very essence.

Once it becomes clear that neither a temporal event nor anything necessarily entailing a temporal event can proceed from all eternity from that which necessitates its effects by its very essence, the claim that the Maker of the world is a complete cause from all eternity is disproved. Once that claim is disproved, no particular entity other than Him can be beginningless. This demonstrates that everything other than Allah is brought into being, existing after not having existed, whether one holds