even if they say:

“Its nonexistence requires a determinant, and for them that determinant is the absence of the cause (1)—all of which is nonexistence,”

they do not say:

“Nonexistence requires something existent.”

Since this is clear, his statement:

(“The ground of the argument must necessarily cease to remain alongside the efficient cause, just as it existed apart from the efficient cause”)

is ambiguous. For need exists precisely when the efficient cause is actually producing its effect. How, then, could its need for the efficient cause cease at the very time when it needs that cause? And how could it need the efficient cause when the cause has not affected it, while it is nonexistent and has no need whatsoever for an efficient cause—yet, when it does need that cause, it would not need it?

If they say:

“It (2), while nonexistent, cannot come into existence except through an efficient cause,”

we reply:

This is part of what we have already stated. Its inability to come into existence except through an efficient cause is an inseparable truth concerning it. It cannot be said that this applies to it while it is nonexistent but not while it exists.

Once it has become clear that an act entails the temporal origination of its effect, and that an agent’s willing to act entails the temporal origination of what is willed, this demonstrates that every effect, and everything whose production is willed, comes into existence after not having existed, without exception. It is thereby known that it is impossible [that there be] (3) an eternal will concerning any contingent thing whose intended object accompanies it from eternity and forever—whether that will is general, encompassing everything that proceeds from Him (* or specific to some effects. Then it is said: “As for its being general (4), encompassing everything that proceeds from Him,” *) (5), its impossibility is evident and agreed—