and the foremost philosophers before Aristotle did not affirm the beginninglessness of the world; rather, they acknowledged that the celestial spheres were temporally originated, having come into existence after not existing, though they differed widely concerning matter—the point (1) here is that, despite their misguidance, these philosophers would not countenance regarding a contingent being—which may either exist or not exist—as beginningless and eternal. Rather, they said that it could only be temporally originated. Nor would they countenance saying that an effect—something fashioned and brought into being—is beginningless and eternal, or that anything the Creator willed to bring about is beginningless and eternal. The falsity of these claims is manifest to the self-evident principles (2) of reason. Those among their later adherents who espoused them were driven to do so only by the contradictory doctrines to which they had committed themselves and which forced them into these positions.

Similarly, foundational principles held by many speculative theologians compelled them to adopt positions whose falsity is known by rational necessity, such as a will or speech existing in no substrate; one and the very same thing constituting diverse realities (3); or something in which one part precedes (4) another, yet whose individual constituents are eternal, every part of it having always been beginningless and eternal—and other such claims.

As for what al-Rāzī mentions [and his peers.] (5) concerning this and other questions regarding the consensus of the sages—such as his claim that they unanimously agreed that contingency is the cause of dependence and that a contingent effect may be beginningless and eternal—he merely reports what he found in Avicenna’s books and assumes that this represents the consensus of the philosophers.