and consequently nothing would come into being in the world, contrary to what is observed.

They do not maintain this, nor (1) does any rational person say that He is an eternal, complete cause of all His effects, or an eternal necessitating cause of the entire world, down to its individual entities. Nor does anyone say that all He wills coexists with Him from eternity. Rather, they say that the fundamental constituents of the world, such as the celestial spheres and the elements, are eternal and beginningless (2) as individual entities, while movements and generated things are eternal in kind.

Alternatively, they say that the materials of this world—such as indivisible atoms (3), prime matter, or something else—are eternal and beginningless as individual entities. All of this is false, because if any such thing were eternal, its agent would necessarily have entailed its existence from eternity, whether He is called a cause necessitating it by virtue of His essence from eternity, an eternal, complete cause that necessarily entails its effect, or an agent acting by His eternal will, [which necessarily entails] (4) the intended effect in eternity.

[The Invalidity of the Claim That the Agent of the World Is a Complete Cause of Its Fundamental Constituents but Not of Its Temporal Events]

If it is said, “He is a complete cause of the fundamental constituents of the world, but not of its temporal events”; or, “He wills by an eternal will that necessarily entails that what it wills coexist with it from eternity, yet that [eternal will coexisting] (5) with what it wills relates only to the world’s fundamental constituents, not to its temporal events,” they are told: This is false for several reasons.

One is that a particular effect’s coexistence with its agent—especially its coexistence with Him from eternity—