His existence; to deny of Him whatever contradicts that necessity is, indeed, correct. The very necessity of His existence rules out the idea that His being could depend on something that, in turn, does not depend on Him. For if we were to imagine a thing that can do without Him while He Himself could exist only through it, then His existence would rest not on Himself alone but on that other entity as well.

By contrast, if we imagine something that needs the Necessary Being and can never dispense with Him, and whose existence the Necessary Being, by His very nature, entails, the necessity of existence in no way forbids this, for He exists by Himself even though His very Self necessitates matters that can exist only through Him.

In fact, those Peripatetic philosophers claim that the universe is His inescapable concomitant, inseparable from Him, and that nothing can exist unless the universe exists—yet they still insist that He is necessary in and of Himself. If, then, they allow Him to necessitate realities that are separate from Him without impugning His necessary existence, how could it compromise that necessity to say that He necessitates what is inseparable from Him? And if it be admissible to say that He “depends” on His concomitants, then let Him be said to “depend” on the universe. Whether one chooses to call those concomitants conditions, attributes, parts, or externals, these are merely different names. Once the rational truths are understood, an intelligent person is not troubled by a multiplicity of labels. The people of misguidance do most of their deceiving of the uninformed with grand, ambiguous phrases; yet when a discerning observer investigates them, he finds them void of meaning and fit for the proverb: “I hear the grinding, but I see no flour.”

Accordingly, if it is said that His existence entails His essence, His attributes, or anything of that kind, the necessity of existence does not preclude it, because these things are neither independent of Him nor efficient causes producing Him. The very necessity of His existence in and of Himself only rules out His having an agent or efficient cause, whether that agent would itself be His effect or not. If it is not His effect, the matter is obvious: whoever has an agent that can do without him is contingent in himself and possesses nothing of self-necessity. Such is the state of all contingent beings in relation to Him—exalted is He—