This is comparable to the way a word, when it denotes a meaning by direct signification (muṭābaqa), also denotes whatever is contained within that meaning by implicative signification (taḍammun) and whatever necessarily follows from it by entailment (iltizām). No one would therefore claim that the meaning indicated by direct signification is dependent on the meaning indicated by inclusion or by simple entailment—except in the same sense one might say that the meaning denoted by direct signification is dependent on itself. That, in fact, is what a person intends when he says, “It needs itself,” though the phrasing itself is admittedly awkward. Our concern, however, is with the intention behind the expression, for sheer rhetorical scoffing establishes no truth and refutes no falsehood; yet such scoffing is their habitual style in this field, as Abū Hāmid has observed.

The full benefit of Abū Hāmid’s remarks is gained by recognizing three points:

1. The argument he reports on their behalf is incomplete and equivocal. He did not mention their supposition that the attribute needs the subject while the reverse is not true—as we have already shown. Later, however, he hinted at the argument’s full form when he cited their words: “This would entail that the First is in need of these attributes and hence cannot be absolutely self-sufficient.” He then demonstrated the unsoundness of that claim, and elsewhere we have discussed this argument and others of theirs at length.

The purpose here is only to highlight what Abū Hāmid and those like him noticed of the flaws in their reasoning. In essence, they are driven either to deny the attributes—because they realize that the Essence depends on them, which would render the Necessary Being dependent on, or constituted by, something other than Himself—or to conclusions of that sort. He replied that, although the observation is correct, nothing in the proof for a Necessary Existent negates such dependence unless evidence is first produced that the Necessary Existent is an essence devoid of attributes and that He is one in whom no plurality can inhere. In the final analysis, all they actually seek to exclude is multiplicity and composition, relying on the same proof they advance for divine oneness, as Abū Hāmid noted when he said: “Your refutation of the first category—the positing of two beings in the absolute sense—we have already shown to be unsupported by any argument in the preceding question.”