the Active Intellect. They say:

“It emanates perpetually, but the preparedness of receptive entities arises through the occurrence of celestial motions and stellar conjunctions. Those do not proceed from the Active Intellect. In the case of the First Originator,(1) however, it is the originator of everything other than itself; thus preparedness, receptivity, the recipient, and what is received all proceed from it.”

It may then be said:

“If it is a complete cause that necessitates by its essence, and it emanates perpetually, with its emanation dependent on absolutely [nothing](2) other than itself, then everything proceeding from it, whether through an intermediary or without one,(3) must be inseparably attendant upon it and eternal as it is. Nothing temporal could therefore proceed from it, whether mediately or immediately. For its action and origination do not depend upon any preparedness or receptivity(4) arising from something else. Rather, it originates the condition and what is conditioned, the recipient and what is received, the preparedness, and what emanates upon the prepared recipient.

“If it alone is the agent of all these things, it cannot be a complete, eternal cause that necessarily entails its effect. That would require its entire effect to be beginningless and eternal as it is. Since everything other than it is its effect, everything other than it would consequently have to be beginningless and eternal. This is a brazen denial of sensory reality.”

Whoever reflects upon and understands this will recognize that, once the position has been fully conceived, its falsity is known by necessity.

[The Consequences of the Speculative Theologians’ Refusal to Affirm a Beginningless Succession of Temporal Events]

Their argument gained such force, and they acquired such strength against the proponents of the later, [innovated](5) speculative theology condemned by the Salaf and the leading scholars—among the Jahmiyya, the Muʿtazila, and those—