If he is then told, “The whole depends on what is possible,” he replies, “That possible component is among the necessary consequences of what is necessary in itself.”

These people say this when the possibility of the attributes is understood to mean that they require a subject in which to subsist. The essence does not require such a subject: it requires neither an agent nor a subject, whereas the attributes must have a subject. If, however, what is necessary is defined as that which requires no necessitating cause, then the attributes likewise require no necessitating cause. Nevertheless, these people may concede to their opponents that the attributes have a necessitating cause, namely, the essence.

Their assertion that a single thing cannot be both an agent and a recipient is among the most untenable statements, as has been explained at length elsewhere. These people therefore say that the essence necessitates the attributes and is their subject; the essence is necessary in itself, the attributes are necessary through it, and the whole is necessary—even if it depends on what is possible in itself but necessary through another—because what is necessary in itself necessarily entails the attributes, but not the coming together of the whole.

This answer is also given by those who say that matters connected with His will and power subsist in His essence. Those matters, too, are possible in themselves, and they may be included in what His names designate.

In short, they have no argument that rules out the whole containing something necessary that necessitates something else.

And if it is said: “What needs something else has all the more reason to be in need.”