such that neither exists without the other? If you assert the former, the claimed entailment is invalid. For it is known that none of the parts of the bodies Allah Most High has created is their producer or efficient cause. If no created composite has a part that produces it or serves as its efficient cause, then claiming that this is a universal proposition is utterly unsound. It is not known to hold in any observed particular instance, let alone universally.

If it is said, “By dependence, we mean that this cannot exist without that,”

one may reply: Why do you say that such a relation is impossible for what is necessary in itself? What is impossible for Him is to be an agent or an efficient cause, if an efficient cause that does not act by choice is held to be possible. As for His existence not entailing concomitants without which He cannot exist, being necessary in Himself does not preclude that, whether they are called attributes, parts, or anything else.

[Third]

This becomes clear from the third argument: if the person who denies such mutual entailment is a philosopher, he holds that His essence entails contingent things distinct from Him. How, then, could it be impossible for His essence to entail His inseparable attributes, or whatever is included in what His name denotes? He also concedes that His essence entails His being necessary and existent