eternity. This statement is [evident] (1); no one who understands it disputes it. It demonstrates both the impossibility of His being the complete, eternal cause of every existent and the impossibility of His being the complete cause of the celestial sphere together with its perpetual motion.

They do not say (2): “From eternity, He is the cause of every existent.” Rather, they say: “From eternity, He is the cause of whatever is individually eternal, such as the celestial spheres. He is always the cause of the category of temporal events, and He becomes the complete cause of a particular temporal event after not having been its complete cause.” This is the true substance of their position.

It may therefore be said to them: For Him to become the complete cause of something after not having been its cause, without anything arising from Him, is intrinsically impossible. For there is no originator of temporal events besides Him. It is therefore impossible for another to bring about His agency and His being a cause. Thus, none but He can bring about His being the agent of the particular thing. It follows that He Himself must be the originator of His being the cause of, and agent responsible for, that particular thing. Yet this agency came to be after not having existed, so it cannot have proceeded from a complete, eternal cause, because an eternal cause is accompanied by its effect.

It has thus become clear that it is impossible for Him to become the agent of something after not having been so while maintaining that He has always been a complete, eternal cause. There must necessarily subsist in Him states that entail His being the agent of the temporal events that arise from Him, whether they are brought into existence (3) through an intermediary or without one.

Moreover, if it is supposed—as they claim—that His state before bringing the particular thing into being and at the time of