left him admitting his perplexity. When he argued that having a particular magnitude requires a determining cause, and that being in a particular direction requires a determining cause, he said:

“If it is asked: ‘How do you refute someone who says that the magnitude specific to Him, constituting His extent and limit, is necessary to Him by virtue of His essence and therefore requires no determining cause—unlike the magnitudes of created things, which require such a cause because they are contingent? This is because the contingency of contingent things is known only by envisaging power over them. Since created magnitudes are subject to power, their contingency is known, and contingency requires a cause that gives one possibility precedence over another. If there is no powerful being above the Creator, exalted is He, who can exercise power over Him, it is impossible to attribute contingency to Him or establish an argument concerning Him. Have we not agreed that the attributes are eight? Is this number necessary for Him, or is it possible for another attribute to exist? If you say that they must be confined to this number, we likewise say that His having the aforementioned limit is necessary to Him, since there is no difference between a numerical measure of the attributes and a measure of