it is known that an agent can act only through his will and power, and that whatever is within his power and willed by him is originated, this also constitutes a second proof (1) that it is originated.

For this reason, [it is the case that] (2) whenever any rational person conceives that Allah Most High created the heavens and the earth, or created (3) anything whatsoever, this necessarily entails that the created thing was originated and came into being after not having existed.

If one of them is told, “It is eternal yet created,” or, “It is eternal yet [originated]” (4)—with “created” and “originated” being intended in the sense used by these latter-day eternalist philosophers, who mean by “originated” that it is an effect—and they say, “It is eternal and beginningless despite being an effect and a contingent entity that admits both existence and nonexistence,” then, when [sound] (5) reason conceives this doctrine, it judges definitively that it is contradictory and that its proponents have combined two contradictories. They posit something created and originated—an effect and a product capable of either existing or not existing—yet at the same time posit it as eternal and beginningless, necessarily existent through another, and incapable of not existing.

We have discussed this at length in several places in our remarks on al-Muhassal and elsewhere. We have also stated that al-Rāzī’s (6) report concerning the speculative theologians—that they allow the existence of a produced entity—