an eternally moving entity necessitated another eternally moving entity, it would necessitate] (1) only what was proportionate to it. As for moving entities that differ in magnitude, attributes, and motions, they cannot proceed from an entity moving with a uniform motion.

Furthermore, the created effect depends upon its agent in every respect and possesses nothing except from that agent, whereas the creating agent is wholly independent of it in every respect. Their coexistence (2) from pre-eternity and forever precludes one from being a self-sufficient agent and the other a dependent effect. Indeed, it precludes the latter from being generated by the former and entails instead that it is an attribute of it. Although offspring is generated from its parent without that parent’s power [or will] (3), choice, or volition (4), it nevertheless comes into existence from that parent. But that which is generated from something cannot conceivably be inseparable from that which generated it and simultaneous with it in existence.

This is why, notwithstanding the unbelief and ignorance (5) inherent in the assertion of those Arab polytheists who said that the angels were Allah’s children and His daughters, the assertion of these people is even more unbelieving in several respects. Those polytheists held that the angels were originated beings that came into existence after not having existed. They also held that (6) Allah created the heavens and the earth; they did not maintain that the world was eternal.

These people, however, say that the intellects and souls—which they call the angels,