anything else, nor does He ask anyone for anything—transcendent and exalted is He—so how could His very existence stand in need of any created thing?

This particular notion of union held by the Christians bears, in certain respects, a resemblance to the doctrine of those who advocate absolute oneness and universal union—namely the partisans of waḥdat al-wujūd—who say, as Ibn ʿArabī, author of “al-Fuṣūṣ” (The Bezels of Wisdom) and “al-Fatūḥāt al-Makkiyya” (The Meccan Openings), puts it: “The concrete essences of created things are fixed in non-existence, and the Being of the Real overflows upon them. Thus they depend on Him insofar as they share in the common, generic existence—which is His existence—while He, in turn, is said to depend on them insofar as each possesses its particular essence that is supposedly fixed in non-existence.” In this way they make each of Creator and creature dependent upon the other.

They declare, “Existence is one,” and yet they proceed to affirm a multiplicity of distinct entities, saying that these entities are merely “manifestations” and “loci of disclosure.” If the manifestation and the locus of disclosure are other than the One who appears through them, plurality is thereby affirmed; but if