The first scholar then began to champion the view that existence is something additional to essence, in order to prove that the predicate is applied univocally (1).

The second replied, “It is not the doctrine of al-Ashʿari or of the People of the Sunnah that His existence is identical to His essence (2).”
The first objected to this claim.

I said, “As for the theologians of Ahl al-Sunnah, they hold that the existence of every thing is identical to its essence. The opposite view is that of the Muʿtazilah, who say that the existence of every thing is an additional factor over and above its essence; and each side is, in one respect, correct. The sound position is that these names are applied univocally, as I have established elsewhere, and I have rebutted the charge of composition with the two well-known answers.

“As for grounding the whole issue on whether the existence of a thing is or is not identical with its essence, that is a mistake attributed to Ibn al-Khatib. Even if we say that the existence of a thing is identical to its essence, it does not follow that the term is predicated of it and of its like only homonymously (5), as happens with generic nouns in general. For the word ‘blackness’ is predicated of this blackness and that blackness univocally, even though the blackness of this individual is not numerically the same as the blackness of that individual;”