nor does anything draw near to Him, nor does He draw near to anything, and so forth. Indeed, they also say that He cannot be seen or perceived by any other sense, nor can He be pointed to.

Others among them say that He has neither knowledge, nor power, nor life, nor any other attributes.

Still others say that He is called existent, living, knowing, and powerful only metaphorically or by verbal equivocation, and that these names convey no intelligible meaning.

They say: “If we affirm these attributes, it follows that He occupies space; and whatever occupies space is composite, or as small as an indivisible atom,” and other such claims. They therefore flee from these attributes, believing that affirming them entails ascribing corporeality to Him. In their view, bodies exist, but some regard them as originated in time, while others regard them as contingent. Thus, if they describe the beginningless Necessary Existent in these terms, He must, according to them, be contingent or originated in time, which contradicts His necessary existence and His beginninglessness. They say that these premises are known through reasoning.

Those who affirm the attributes, however, say that anything described by these negative attributes can only be impossible in existence. Such impossibility is incompatible with existence, let alone necessary existence.

They therefore say that those who describe Him by these attributes have attributed to Him what can characterize only something whose existence is impossible. Whoever describes that whose existence is necessary in terms of that whose existence is impossible has placed it below even something nonexistent whose existence is possible.

They say that these premises are self-evidently known. Thus, they say to the others: “You fled from describing Him as contingent, only to describe Him as impossible in existence; and from describing Him as originated in time, only to describe Him as nonexistent.”