proceeding from a single, simple being that has neither attribute nor act, as those thinkers maintained. Rather, they agreed with the position of the leading philosophers who preceded Aristotle and affirmed the attributes and acts subsisting in the Lord’s essence.

They say:

“A particular temporal event comes into being only when its complete cause is present—a cause that becomes complete only when the event occurs. The cause was completed by what the Lord Most High brings about and by the volitions and acts that subsist in Him, or by other things (1) that they maintain in this regard.”

They therefore say:

“The Lord can govern this world only according to our position that temporal events—such as volitions, instances of knowledge, and other things—arise within Him.” They also say that those among their companions and others who deny this do so not on the basis of any rational proof, but merely out of a vague notion of declaring Him transcendent and exalted. Yet He must be declared transcendent and exalted above this very notion of transcendence and exaltation.

If it is said to them:

“When the second temporal event (2) occurs, its complete cause must be present; the absence of the first event is not sufficient.”

They reply (3):

“Rather, the perfection of the resolute will and complete power supplied what necessitated the coming into being of the thing within His power. We do not say that the agent’s state (4) before and afterward is one and the same, with nothing new arising by which He produces the second event. [Rather, the agent’s states vary] (5), and His own essence necessitates those states subsisting in Him. However, the existence of the second state is conditional upon the absence of that which”