Existent. It is well known that whatever exists potentially cannot pass into actuality except through something that brings it into actuality. There must therefore be something above the celestial sphere that necessitates the occurrence of its motion.

As for Aristotle and his followers’ claim that the First moves the celestial sphere as a beloved moves his lover; that the sphere moves in order to imitate the First; and that the First is thereby the cause of causes and that the sphere subsists through it—since (1) the sphere subsists through its motion, its motion through its will and longing, and its will and longing through the existence of the antecedent [beloved] (2), the desired object that it moved to imitate—this argument, besides containing false claims that have been exposed elsewhere, establishes at most the final cause of the sphere’s motion. It provides no account of the efficient cause of its motion unless they say:

The sphere itself originates its conceptions and motions [without] (3) needing the Necessary Existent or the First Cause in order to produce them, just as the loving devotee does not need the beloved object of his love (4) in respect of being the agent who moves toward it, but only in respect of its being the intended object sought through that movement. This amounts to saying that temporally originated motions and the things that move are independent of the Lord of the worlds, and that He produces none of these temporal events and is not their Lord.

If, in addition, they say that He did not originate the celestial sphere, but that it is eternal and necessarily existent in itself, then He would not be the Lord of anything in the world. If they say, “He is the One who originated it,” this is a contradiction on their part like the contradiction of the Qadariyya, for His originating its essence and attributes would entail that it would not—