your terminology, and the proof does not establish the existence of the Necessary Existent as defined by your terminology. It establishes only a terminus at which the regress of causes and effects ends; it does not establish this further claim.

The regress can be ended by a single being possessing eternal attributes that have no agent producing them, just as its essence has no agent producing it, while those attributes subsist in its essence.

[Ibn Rushd’s commentary on al-Ghazālī]

Ibn Rushd explained that, if this alternative is put to them—one of the alternatives they employed to disprove multiplicity—they will ultimately have to prove that the Necessary Existent cannot be composed of an attribute and that which possesses it, nor can its essence possess multiple attributes. This is something they cannot establish on the basis of their own principles.

He then proceeded to explain that the absurdity they sought to establish as a necessary consequence of assuming this alternative does not follow. He said:

“They may then be asked: ‘If by necessarily existent you mean that it has no efficient cause, why do you say that?’ That is, why do you say that it cannot possess attributes? And why should it be impossible