And this is a verbal dispute that disappears once the meanings are clarified. This explains one of the two sides: that something existent cannot have pure nonexistence as its cause.

As for “the second side”—that something existent cannot cause an existence that entails nonexistence—this is because pure nonexistence does not require an existent cause; the absence of an existent cause suffices. Moreover, when an existent cause produces an effect, it must produce something, whereas pure nonexistence is not a thing. An effect that is pure nonexistence is therefore equivalent to the absence of an effect. Rather, when annihilation is brought about, annihilation is something existent involving nonexistence. Making something existent nonexistent, or something nonexistent existent, is intelligible. Making something nonexistent nonexistent, however, is intelligible only in the sense of leaving it nonexistent, and the absence of an agent suffices for that. There is a clear distinction between the absence of an agent and of a necessitating factor where the cause is absent, on the one hand, and an agent that produces nonexistence, a factor that necessitates nonexistence, and a cause of nonexistence, on the other. Nonexistence does not require the latter; the former suffices.

Thus both sides have become clear: pure nonexistence, unmixed with any existence, cannot be anything existent at all—neither a cause nor an effect, neither an agent nor anything acted upon. Accordingly, pure and complete existence, unmixed with any nonexistence, cannot in any way be a cause of nonexistence, an effect arising from it, an agent producing it, or something produced by it. That it is neither an effect arising from nonexistence nor something produced by it is evident. As for its not being a cause of nonexistence: if it were a cause of pure nonexistence, pure nonexistence would not require an existent cause; and if it were a cause of nonexistence