that no event could occur. This is sheer denial of the evident. Such is their way in the great majority (1) of the arguments they advance for the pre-eternity of the world, (2 for what those arguments entail is that nothing could ever come into being, whereas the occurrence of events in the world 2) (2) is witnessed (3). Their arguments are therefore known to belong to the class of sophistical fallacies.

This resembles their principal (4) argument for claiming that He is a fully efficacious agent pre-eternally and that a fully efficacious agent necessarily entails its effect. What this argument entails (5), however, is that nothing could ever come into being. They went astray because they failed to distinguish between being an agent in the absolute sense and being an agent with respect to every possible thing.

Thus, when they say (6), “His being an agent must be due either to His particular essence, to something inseparable from it, or to something separate from it. The third is impossible, because that separate thing is itself among His effects; That separate thing therefore cannot exercise causal influence upon Him, since a causal circle is impossible. Under the first and second alternatives, the [perpetuity] (7) of His being an agent necessarily follows,”

it is said to them:

His being an agent may mean that He brings into existence everything that proceeds from Him; it may mean that He acts upon some particular thing in the world; and it may mean that He is an agent in general—for example (8), that He brings about one thing (9) after another.