The response is as follows:
His statement—“Its need of an efficient cause must be because of this or that”—may have one of two meanings. He may intend thereby to establish the cause on account of which it came to need an efficient cause, or he may intend to establish evidence demonstrating that it needs an efficient cause. For something joined to the particle lām to express causation may be a cause of actual existence in external reality, or it may be a ground for knowing that existence and establishing it in the mind. The latter is called evidence, proof, an indicative syllogism, and an indicative demonstration. The former, when used as evidence, is called a causal syllogism, a causal demonstration, and a “why-demonstration,” because it supplies the cause of the effect both in external reality and in the mind(1).
Thus, when someone says, “The need of an efficient cause must be due either to temporal origination, to possibility, or to both together”—the three positions on this matter mentioned by a group of later scholars—the issue should in fact be framed as follows: Do you mean to investigate the [cause itself](2) that, in reality, necessitates this need, or to investigate the evidence demonstrating this need?
If you mean the former, you are told: This presupposes proof that the effect’s need of an agent is itself due solely to some further cause, but you have not established that. Rather, one may say: Everything other than Allah needs Him by virtue of its very essence and reality, not because of some cause that rendered its essence and reality dependent upon Allah. It is well known that not every judgment or attribute predicated of entities(3) must hold by virtue of a cause(4), for that would entail an impossible infinite regress,