then the true import of their doctrine concerning all temporally originated events is of the same kind as the Qadariyya’s doctrine concerning the actions of living beings.

For this reason, Ibn Sīnā was compelled (1), at this point, to maintain that motion is not something that comes into being one part after another. Rather, it is a single entity that has always existed—as we have (2) already quoted his words and demonstrated their falsity. He said this only so that he would not be forced to concede that (3) one temporally originated event after another proceeds from the complete cause. He thus contradicted plain reason and sensory perception, both of which establish that motion comes into being one part after another, in order to preserve his claim that the Lord of the worlds has not brought anything into being, since, in his view, He is a complete cause. Yet the foremost of their own thinkers have acknowledged the falsity of their doctrine.

[Ibn Malka’s Position and Its Refutation]

As for those among them who maintain that successive acts of will subsist in Him—such as Abū al-Barakāt and others like him—they say that He intrinsically necessitates the celestial spheres and, through the successive acts of will subsisting in Him, necessitates the successive events occurring within them.

The first response to these men is of the same kind as that given to their brethren, though the argument applies even more readily to them, for they are closer to the truth. It is therefore said to them:

If He may bring temporally originated events into being one after another through acts of will subsisting in Him [one after another] (4), why may the celestial spheres themselves not have come into being after not existing, through successive acts of will subsisting in Him?