And the reason for this is that anything of this kind must coexist with its effect—whether that effect is termed an “effect” or an “object of will,” and whether its source is termed “one that necessitates by its very essence,” an “originator,” or by some other name. Yet for that effect to coexist with it in pre-eternity entails that nothing can subsequently come into being from it after previously not existing. If that were not so, temporal events would have no agent; rather, they would come into being of themselves, which is intrinsically impossible. Thus, affirming one who necessitates by his very essence, or an agent possessed of choice whose object of will coexists with him in pre-eternity, necessarily entails that temporal events (1) have no agent. This is impossible.

[Ibn Sīnā’s Position]

This applies with particular force to the assertion of those who say that the world emanated from a simple essence in which neither attribute nor act inheres, as Ibn Sīnā and others like him maintain. They hold that diverse things emanate from a simple essence and that a simple, complete, pre-eternal cause necessarily produces diverse effects. This is among the positions most plainly impossible to sound reason.

Whatever intermediaries they posit, such as the intellects and others, do not deliver them from this false position. For those intermediaries—[such as the intellects]—(2) emanated from something other than themselves, while other things emanated from them.

If they are simple in every respect, then something diverse and temporally originated (3) has emanated from that which is simple and pre-eternal. But if there is diversity within them (4), or if something originated inheres in them, then diverse things and temporal events have likewise (5) emanated from that which is simple, complete, [and pre-eternal] (6),