it were possible, then it would be possible for everything other than Allah to come into being after not having existed, and these eternal entities would themselves be among the things whose origination is possible.

Moreover, according to this view, He would be, by virtue of His essence, the necessitating cause(1) of His effects(2)—MS Ayn reads: “He did not become,” which is an error—and a volitional agent with respect to things other than them; yet affirming either of these two positions contradicts the other](3). .

If it is said, “Temporal events may continue perpetually,” then it is impossible for Him to be an eternal cause of any one of them, although, on this supposition, the world is never devoid of them. MS Ayn (only): “and the world under both suppositions”; the wording contains an omission and corruption. Rather, the world necessarily entails them. It is therefore impossible for Him to be a [complete]—complete:(4).—cause of them in eternity, and it is impossible for Him to be the cause of that which entails them without also being the cause of what it entails.

(7 Moreover, everything other than the Necessary Existent can either exist or not exist, and whatever is such exists only after having been nonexistent 7) (5). (6) (7). [Moreover, the claim that a particular effect accompanies its agent from eternity and forever is known by rational necessity to be false. This is therefore among the matters on which the great majority of rational people, earlier and later, have agreed—even Aristotle, his early followers, and the later thinkers who followed him. They all agree that anything whose existence and nonexistence are both possible is not