except something that has come into being after previously not existing. Only Avicenna and those who agreed with him affirmed an eternal contingent being. His fellow philosophers objected to him on this point and explained that he had departed from the position of his predecessors, as Averroes and others have stated.

Likewise, the great majority of rational people from every school agree that anything described as an effect, a creation, or something made must necessarily have come into being.

Thus, when the great majority of rational people conceive that He created the heavens and the earth, they understand that He brought them into being. Their minds cannot conceive of them as both created and eternal, even if this is expressed in other terms, such as saying, “They are an eternal creation,” or “They are an eternal effect,” and the like. Rather, to the great majority of rational people, either formulation combines two opposites.

Those who affirm that an effect may be simultaneous with its agent cite statements such as, “I moved my hand, and the ring moved,” and similar examples. This analogy is inapposite, for none of the examples they cite contains an efficient cause that precedes the caused effect. What merely comes first in the wording is a condition, or a cause akin to a condition, and something of that nature may be simultaneous with what depends upon it. This is assuming that the second is simultaneous with the first. Otherwise, in many of the examples they cite, the second comes after the first despite being contiguous with it, just as the parts of time are contiguous with one another despite their succession.

As for what al-Rāzī mentioned in his Muhassal and in his other, unverified discussions, where he said(1): “The theologians agreed that an eternal entity cannot be dependent(2) upon an agent, and there was agreement