for everything other than Him is originated and preceded by non-existence; nothing alongside Him is co-eternal. Indeed, His unique pre-eternity is the very apex of perfection, liberality, and beneficence.

If, however, the term “cause” is taken in another sense—such as their examples of a ring moving together with the hand that wears it, or a ray issuing from the sun—this does not belong to the class of an agent that brings something into being. Rather, it pertains to the category of conditions, and a condition may coincide with the thing that depends on it.

As for a true agent, it is impossible for its specific effect to accompany it, even though nothing prevents the agent from producing one thing after another. Thus, the eternity of the kind of action, like the eternity of the kind of motion, is fully compatible with—and in fact entails—the temporal origination of each individual instance, for it is impossible for any particular instance to be eternal in itself.

This is the view held by the vast majority of rational people across all nations—even by Aristotle and his followers. Although they professed the eternity of the universe, they did not affirm for it an originating creator or efficient cause, but only a final cause for whose sake the celestial sphere moves in an effort to resemble it, because they regarded the heavens’ motion as volitional.

The doctrine that “the First is not the creator of the world but merely its final cause, to be emulated”—though it is sheer ignorance and unbelief—nevertheless concurs with other rational thinkers in denying that a contingent effect can be co-eternal with its cause, contrary to what Ibn Sīnā and those who follow him maintain.

For this reason Ibn Rushd and other philosophers who followed Aristotle’s path, together with the rest of rational people, rejected Ibn Sīnā’s claim. They showed that in making it he departed from his predecessors and from the consensus of sound reason. His aim was to splice together elements of the theologians’ position with that of his philosophical forerunners, declaring that the possible existent—though dependent on the Necessary Being—is produced by Him while remaining eternal, sharing His pre-eternity. Those who accepted the feasibility of this view, such as Suhrawardī of Aleppo, merely followed him in that regard.