is closer to plain reason and further removed from contradiction, just as it is closer to sound transmitted evidence.

[The Third Argument]

The same response applies to the third argument: affirming a limit at one end but not the other is further removed from impossibility than affirming a self-subsisting being of whom one can say neither that He is finite nor that He is infinite.

Likewise, affirming a being without limits at either end is closer to reason than asserting that He admits neither the affirmation nor the negation of a limit.

His statement: “It follows that the Lord must depend, for His magnitude, on a necessitating cause and a determining agent. Dimension means nothing other than the parts themselves, so the Lord would be caused by something other than Himself.”

The response is that every one of those who deny the attributes has said something comparable. The Kullābīs and Ashʿarīs say that the essence entails a definite number of attributes, to the exclusion of others. Although they have differed over whether all His attributes are known to human beings, they have not differed on the question of affirming attributes without limit; rather, His attributes must be finite. Thus, they have made the essence entail one particular number rather than any other, and particular attributes rather than others. Indeed, it also entails commanding one thing rather than other things that might be commanded, and willing one thing rather than other things that might be willed, even though its relation to everything that might be willed or commanded is the same.