Even if they attach some other meaning to the term “accident,” that will be of no avail to them. The scholastic theologians who said,

“A substance is that which occupies a spatial locus and is receptive to an accident,”

meant by “accident” any property that inheres in something else, whether it is inseparable from it or merely supervenes upon it. It is evident that every substance is the bearer of such properties. In their own system, the Creator—exalted be He—has modesty and knowledge subsisting in Him; and if the Creator, exalted is He, is the locus of properties—and they themselves call Him a substance—how can they deny that properties subsist in anything else?

These Christians, for their part, affirm a subtle substance in which no accidents reside, while also asserting, “Properties subsist in Him.” This is a private terminology of theirs that no school of rational inquiry accepts. They then fall into further contradiction by saying, “Whatever exists is either a substance or an accident”—a clear inconsistency.

Among Muslim dialecticians there is disagreement over labeling the divine attributes that subsist in God as “accidents”: some employ the term, others reject it, yet both sides concur that the attributes truly subsist in Him. And the majority of Muslim dialecticians