The Nature of Divine Causality

"The existence of an effect is among the necessary concomitants of the existence of its perfect and complete cause such that the twain are inseparable. The question is that is the agent-cause effective in the existence of its effect directly through it own ipseity [zat] or not; now if the agent-cause is not effective in the existence of its effect directly through it own ipseity, so it is obvious that an additional factor is required for the causal-agency to be effective for instance a condition [shart] or will [irada] would have to be increased over and above the ipseity of the agent-cause, and in that case the entity which had been presumed to be the agent-cause would no longer remain the agent-cause, and instead the ipseity of that agent together with that additional feature in combination will have to be regarded as the true agent-cause and the question which was asked concerning the existent which had initially been presumed to be the agent-cause will then revert to this combination and so on and so forth until the chain ultimately ends on such an existent which is the agent-cause solely on the basis of its own ipseity. Hence an agent-cause whose agency is the essential requirement of its ipseity such that no additional factor or feature has any part in its perfect and complete causal-agency, will certainly be an agent-cause solely through its ipseity. Now having established such an agent-cause it consequently becomes necessary for the effect of such an agent-cause to be among the necessary concomitants of the existence of the agent-cause or its ipseity” (Asfar al Arba’a, safar#1)
Either the Divine Essence is the effective and the efficient cause of the Cosmos or it is not and if it is not the effective and the efficient cause of the Cosmos so that which is the effective and the efficient cause of the Cosmos is more worthy of being called the Creator, but this is impossible because there cannot be multiple Necessary Beings, therefore it is evident that none other than the Divine Essence is the effective and the efficient cause of the cosmos.
Now as has been established above that God is the efficient and the effective cause of the Creation of the Cosmos, so it is impossible that the determinant and the Perfect Cause should exist without its effect, and to assert that the Perfect Cause did exist without having caused its effect is tantamount to asserting that the Divine Essence alone was not the efficient and the effective cause of the Cosmos, because it lacked some feature, attribute or property that could render it a complete and a perfect-cause , such as His Will to create, and the subsequent addition or emergence of that property , attribute or feature together with the Divine Essence acted as the perfect or the efficient cause of the Cosmos, but in this case the same problem reverts again that in any such causation the Divine Essence alone will not be the efficient and the effective cause but the Essence and that subsequent property, feature or attribute together will have to be considered as the efficient and effective cause, not to mention the other subsidiary complications that arise from any such theological solution such as God being reduced to a composite entity being a complex of its Essence and Attribute, and also becoming mutable or changeable due to the prior absence of that feature or property in the Essence and the subsequent addition of the same into the Essence.

A preponderant[marjah] cannot exist without causing a preference [tarjih], because if a preponderant is said to exist without causing the preference so that would only imply that, that which was being assumed to be the preponderant was in fact not a preponderant.Now since it is impossible for a preponderant [marjah] to exist without causing a preference [tarjih] in relation to its effect and since we have established that the Divine Essence alone is the effective and the efficient cause of the Cosmos therefore it is impossible for a situation to arise in which the Divine Essence exists without having caused its effect, and since the Divine Essence is eternal and the Essence alone is the preponderating factor and nothing else, therefore the Cosmos which is His effect is also eternal.
For Mulla Sadra the cosmos is both temporal [hadith] and eternal simultaneously albeit the aspect in which it is eternal, it is not temporal in that same aspect and the aspect in which it is temporal it is not eternal in that same aspect and hence there is no contradiction here. The physical universe is eternal as far as its material cause is concerned but it is temporal as far as its formal cause is concerned because the nature of the material cosmos is that of constant and perpetual change and flow necessitated by substantive movement which is the very essence of this lower world. It is this same constant and perpetual flow or motion that results in a series of successive forms where each present form is succeeded or replaced by a subsequent one, such that no particular form is permanent in character. Matter lacks the capacity to bear multiple and mutually exclusive forms simultaneously therefore the only way it can manifest all forms for which it has a receptive potential is through the effacement and substitution of the effaced form with another successive one.