And you denounced (1) your opponents when they affirmed origination outside time, saying that this was inconceivable. It may therefore be said to you: Likewise, no act whatsoever can be conceived outside time (2), nor can one conceive of an effect (3) concomitant with its agent when the agent did not precede it in time at all.
[A Return to the Discussion of the Philosophers’ View on Priority and Posteriority]
As for your assertion that priority in essence is intelligible—namely, the priority of a cause over its effect—this is something you have posited in your minds but which has no existence in external reality. No actual agent can be conceived whose effect is concomitant with it (4), whether or not you call it a complete cause.
Your assertion that the sun produces the ray, which is simultaneous with it in time (5), rests upon two premises: that the sun alone is the agent, and that the ray is simultaneous with it in time. Both premises are false. It is well known that the sun alone does not suffice for the ray to come into being. Rather, a body capable of receiving it must also come into being, and the impediments must be removed.
Moreover, we do not concede to you that the ray is simultaneous with the sun in time. Rather, it may be said that it comes after it, even (6) by a slight fraction of time. Likewise, the example you give when someone says, “I moved my hand, and the key—or my sleeve—moved,” rests upon these same two false premises. Who concedes that the hand’s movement is the complete cause of the movement of the sleeve and the key? Rather, the one who produces both motions is the same, but his moving the latter—