impossibilities are conceived: they are posited in the mind in a manner whose actualization in external reality cannot be conceived, for their actualization (1) in external reality is impossible.

On this basis, if it is said:

“What makes a thing need an agent is either its contingency or its coming into being,”

there is no contradiction between the two positions. Every contingent thing has come into being, and everything that comes into being is contingent; the two are inseparable.

Accordingly, the two positions were combined by one who said:

“Indeed, (2) what makes a thing need an agent is both its contingency and its coming into being.”

Thus, all three positions are correct in reality. The dispute arose only because some supposed that a thing could be contingent without having come into being.

What has been established concerning the impossibility of the universe being beginningless, and the impossibility of its agent being a beginningless, eternal cause, is sound—whether it is said:

“He wills by means of a beginningless will that necessarily entails its object accompanying it (3),”

or:

“He does not will”;

and whether it is said:

“He is the cause of the celestial sphere together with its motion,”

or:

“of the celestial sphere without its motion.”

The same applies to anything posited (4) as beginningless alongside Him: it must either coexist with something that has come into being, or be capable of coexisting with something that has come into being. On either supposition, it cannot be beginningless alongside Allah [Most High] (5), for that which is beginningless can proceed only from a complete necessitating cause that necessarily entails its effect. If such a cause existed from eternity, this would entail that nothing could come into being from it; yet things that come into being can arise only from it. Thus, it cannot be a beginningless necessitating cause