opposes it, while the agent’s own essence brings about the positive realities that necessitate the second state.”

Thus, the Necessary Existent does not, in order for anything to proceed from Him, need anything else to be added to Him, as is the case with contingent beings. Rather, His necessarily existent essence itself necessitates everything that proceeds from Him. He—glory be to Him—brings about both a thing and its necessary concomitants, and He brings about one of two mutually incompatible things (1) when the other is absent. He has power over all things.

The coexistence of two opposites, however, is no thing at all, as all rational people agree. Rather, He has power to set a body in motion instead of keeping it at rest, to keep it at rest instead of setting it in motion, to make it black (2) instead of white, and to make it white (3) instead of black. He brings about one of the two opposites rather than the other when His complete will is present together with His perfect power. His own essence necessitates all of this. Even if His essence’s bringing about the first is a condition for the occurrence of the second, it does not thereby depend on anything else. Rather, everything apart from it depends upon it, while it is independent of everything apart from it.

These thinkers thus escaped the objections raised against their predecessors and the flaws in their analogies. When they illustrated their position by what can be understood (4) from the motion of an animal and the sun, they were not subject to the distinctions, counterexamples, and other objections [that are leveled against] (5) their predecessors.

But it may be said to these thinkers (6): “How can you claim that anything in the world is eternal, when there is nothing in