declaring Him free of what they ascribed to Him entailed the greatness necessarily implied by that negation.

Since this is so, those who negate both members of a pair of contradictories, or their equivalents, describe Him in a way that neither affirms anything nor magnifies Him. By contrast, those who maintain that He dwells in all places describe Him in terms that magnify Him.

This is why some who excuse both groups say: “The former intended to declare Him free of imperfection, while the latter intended to magnify Him.” If declaring Him free of imperfection does not constitute praise unless it also entails magnifying Him, then describing Him in terms that magnify Him is closer to reason than describing Him in terms equally applicable to what does not exist, without magnifying Him at all. Those negators are therefore in no position to refute the arguments of those who magnify Him. If they counter them by exposing the unintelligible assertions or contradictions in their position, the latter reply that the negators’ own position contains still greater unintelligible assertions and contradictions.

If the negators say:

“These proponents of indwelling have affirmed a kind of indwelling that entails His dependence on its locus, like form in relation to matter, or existence in relation to fixed reality, and similar relationships in which one depends on the other. We have shown that indwelling is intelligible only when what dwells depends on the locus in which it dwells. This is invalid, because it contradicts His necessary existence, as explained earlier. We have therefore refuted their position.”

There are two answers to this.

First: not everyone who affirms indwelling holds that He depends on its locus. Rather, many proponents of indwelling say: “He is in every place, while having no need of