By contrast, if it is said, “He creates this by saying ‘Be!’ and that by another ‘Be!’” (1), this entails the existence of one effect after another. Whether this is possible is disputed among rational thinkers and the leading authorities of the Sunnah from among you. Moreover, the leading philosophers and many (2) theologians deem it possible.

The point is that if you deem it possible for one temporally originated event after another to proceed from the pre-eternal, beginningless One—who, according to you, is the Lord—then these men likewise maintain this concerning the events within the world that occur in the celestial sphere and elsewhere.

The response is: This is an invalid analogy and a false comparison. When these men (3) say this, what they maintain is that the Lord Himself does one thing after another or speaks something. This is not impossible; rather, it is possible according to plain reason. The most that can be said is that the existence of [the first] (4) and its cessation are preconditions for the second, just as the existence of a father is a precondition for the existence of his child, and that full efficacy for producing the second arises only when the first is no more. If the nonexistence of the first is stipulated as a condition for the second, this is akin to stipulating the absence of one of two contraries as a condition for the existence of the other. Yet the agent producing the newly occurring contrary is not the nonexistence of the first. How much more so, then, when He Himself causes the first to cease?

If it is said, “His bringing about the second (5) is conditional upon the nonexistence of the first,” this falls under stipulating the absence of one contrary as a condition for the existence of its contrary. Furthermore, if the condition is His causing the first to cease, then His act is conditional upon His own act, and causing something to cease is itself a positive act. Moreover, the agent, in the absence of the contrary