The point here is that when our reason makes a universal judgment encompassing all existing things or all objects of knowledge—for example, when we say:
“Whatever exists is either necessary or contingent, either eternal or brought into existence, either subsisting in itself or subsisting in something else, either something that can be pointed to or something subsisting in what can be pointed to. Of any two existing things, one either precedes the other or is simultaneous with it, and is either spatially separate from it or co-located with it”—
and when we say:
“The Maker either precedes the world or is simultaneous with it, and is either outside it or within it”—
our knowledge of these general, universal propositions is mediated by the existing things we have known.
Thus, if we know that every object of knowledge either exists or does not exist, and someone claims that one cannot say of the Necessary Being, “He exists and is not nonexistent,” or says, “He is neither existent nor nonexistent”—as some of the esoteric Qarmatians say—then, although we have not witnessed the unseen, we know that this general assertion and universal proposition encompass other things as well.
If we ask such a person, “Can you establish anything in the observable realm that neither exists nor is nonexistent?” we answer, “No.” We then ask him, “How, then, can you establish in the unseen realm something that neither exists nor is nonexistent?” In this way, we have refuted his claim.
The claim: “I do not ascribe either of the two opposing attributes to Him, because only a body can be receptive to them”
If he says:
“I describe Him as neither this nor that; rather, I deny both of these opposing attributes of Him. He could possess either attribute only if He were receptive to one of them, whereas He is receptive to neither. If He were receptive to them, He would be a body, since these are attributes of bodies. Thus, if we posit an existing being that is not a body, it would be receptive to neither this nor that”—
he is told:
“The same applies to the other heretics when they say, ‘We ascribe to Him neither life nor death, neither knowledge nor ignorance, neither power nor incapacity,