is the Word; accordingly, in their doctrine, the Messiah became the Son of Allah. There is no doubt that these two assertions—each of which, as Allah has stated, embodies their unbelief—are mutually contradictory; for affirming that he is Allah negates his being the Son of Allah. Yet all Christians utter both statements, just as Allah has reported about them. Hence their claim is manifestly self-contradictory to anyone who reflects upon it.

Now, if these hypostases are merely attributes or properties, and one supposes (1) that the bearer of every attribute receives a separate name—just as they illustrate by saying: “Zayd the physician” (2), “Zayd the accountant,” and “Zayd the scribe”—it still remains impossible for some of these attributes to unite with something apart from the essence, or for any of these attributes to detach from the others. No separation among them is conceivable, nor can any one of them be severed from the subject, so that someone might claim that only one of these attributes united with the Messiah. They themselves do not maintain that either; rather, they are agreed that what united with him is a self-subsistent substance. If there is no substance except the substance of the Father, then it must have been the Father’s substance that united; but if the Son’s substance is distinct, the result is two separate substances—something they will not concede. Moreover, the subject never abandons its attributes, just as the attributes never abandon it; therefore it cannot be said that the substance united with the Messiah through the hypostasis of knowledge to the exclusion of life, for knowledge and life are inseparable from the divine essence: it is inconceivable for the essence to part with either of them, or for either of them to part with it.

For this reason it has been remarked that the Christians erred in the very first lesson of arithmetic that everyone knows, namely their statement: “One is three.” As for the saying of some of them, “Uniquely one”