the world (1). Rather, when they say, “Considering the causes of an act—namely, the agent, the end, matter, and form—indicates the eternity of the act,” this—if it indicates anything—indicates only the eternity of its kind, not of the particular act itself. The eternity of its kind is compatible with affirming the conclusions required by all the other rational proofs: that an act can only be temporally originated—even if such acts come into being one after another; that an agent as such, or a voluntary agent, can only have temporally originated acts, even if they occur one after another; that a perpetual succession of temporally originated events in a particular created entity that is eternal and beginningless is impossible; and that it is likewise impossible for a particular effect to be concomitant with its agent (2), having always existed alongside it.

Moreover, the messengers have declared that Allah Most High is the Creator of all things, and that Allah created (3) the heavens and the earth (4) in six days. How, then, could you turn away from sound transmitted revelation and explicit rational proof toward what contradicts them? Indeed, you have affirmed the eternity of something for which all the evidence proves only temporal origination, not eternity.

These people are also told:

If the Lord acts through His acts of will, as you have conceded and as the proofs indicate—indeed, if He is an agent, as you and your brethren have conceded, while maintaining that His effect proceeds eternally from an eternal necessitating cause and that the cause necessitating it is its agent—then one cannot conceive of an agent whose effect is concomitant with him and whom he did not precede by an initial interval of time (5). Indeed, to posit this in the mind is to posit what cannot be conceived.