has no subsistence except through the Creator. If, however, the Creator’s subsistence were through the creature, it would necessarily follow that both Creator and creature subsist through one another, so that each would be dependent on the other; for whatever a thing subsists by, it inevitably needs.

Besides entailing that the Creator is in need of His own creature—a patent act of unbelief—this is also demonstrably impossible to sound reason. Yet it is the inescapable consequence for the Christians, whether they speak of ittiḥād (union) or of ḥulūl (indwelling without union). Although their three principal sects all profess some variety of union, union by definition makes each of the two united parties unable to dispense with the other, and therefore in need of it, just as they themselves illustrate with the soul in relation to the body, or fire in relation to iron.

Indeed, the soul that is in the body depends upon the body, just as the fire contained in iron depends upon the iron. The same is true of indwelling: every indweller is dependent on the locus in which it dwells. This, too, is manifest unbelief whose impossibility is evident to sound intellect.

Moreover, if one were to suppose that this alleged creature exists by itself, eternal and without beginning, then it would no longer be a creature at all. Even then, it remains impossible for two eternal, unoriginated beings each to depend on the other—whether one is thought to be the producing cause of the other, to complete the producing cause of the other, or to be