and that these substances were moving without any order until, by chance, they came together and became ordered, thereby bringing this world into being.

[Refutation of Democritus and Abū Bakr al-Rāzī]

Both views are utterly corrupt.

The proponents of the first view say that the soul became enamored of prime matter, and that the Lord was unable to free it from prime matter until it had tasted the bitter consequences of its union with it. They advanced this claim to avoid affirming the occurrence of an event without a cause, yet they fell into precisely what they sought to avoid: the soul’s love for prime matter arose anew.

They are therefore asked: What necessitated this? They are thus compelled to affirm the occurrence of an event without a cause. Worse still, they must affirm that temporal events occur without proceeding from the Lord of the worlds, while also affirming eternal entities alongside Him.

If they affirm the necessity (1) of these entities’ existence, it follows that a necessarily existent being undergoes change and is characterized by that which entails its origination, deficiency, and contingency.

If they are not necessary in themselves but are made necessary by Him, it follows that He necessitates them to the exclusion of all else. Yet an eternal cause necessarily entails its effect. This would mean that its effect changes (2) and passes from one state to another without any act on the cause’s part. But the transformation (3) of an inseparable effect without any change in its cause is impossible; otherwise, it would not be that cause’s effect.

If they deem this possible, they should likewise deem it possible for the world to be beginninglessly eternal and inseparably concomitant with the Lord’s essence, yet despite this (4) to break apart, for heaven to split and be rent asunder, and for the Resurrection to occur without any act by the Lord or anything whatsoever newly proceeding from Him—merely because an event arises within the world without anyone bringing it about.