Rather, Aristotle and his Peripatetic followers call the First Cause a “substance,” never the “Necessary Existent.” By contrast, their later schoolmen—such as Ibn Sīnā and those who walked in his footsteps—call it the “Necessary Existent” and no longer describe it as a substance. A full critique of these positions is given elsewhere; what concerns us here is that the things they claim to be the subject matter of the “divine science,” which in their view are totally abstracted from matter both in thought and in external reality, are, when scrutinised, entities that exist only in the mind, not in the outside world.

Universal, all-embracing being does not exist as such except in the intellect; it has no external, concrete existence—just as the universal “man” or the universal “animal” exists only as a mental construct and not in empirical reality.

This discussion has been expanded in another place, and it is evident that the Jews and Christians—despite the abrogation and alteration that befell their scriptures—are still closer to the truth in matters of divinity than these philosophers.

Although these topics are dealt with in detail elsewhere, we have alluded to them here because they touch on the claim of certain Christians that the Lord possesses exactly three essential attributes and no others. Should they intend by “essential” what these philosophers mean by “intrinsic,” their claim is false, built upon a false premise. For the Greeks’ division of necessary attributes into (1) the intrinsic, (2) the accidental that necessarily accompanies the existent, (3) the accidental that necessarily accompanies the quiddity, and (4) the accidental that necessarily