that are indivisible, or of matter and form.
At this point, people fall into several groups. Some say to you, “He is above the Throne but is not a body.” Others say, “He is above the world and is a body, meaning that He can be pointed to, not that He is composite.”
Some concede to you that this entails His being composite. Others neither affirm nor deny using innovated expressions, but attend instead to rational meanings and scriptural expressions. They say to you, “The element common to both is subsistence in itself, for all of them share subsistence in themselves, occupying a spatial location, and lying in a direction. These properties are inseparable from one another.”
Many or most of them say to you, “Nothing subsisting in itself can be conceived without occupying a spatial location, just as nothing subsisting in something else can be conceived except as an attribute, whether or not it is called an accident.” Thus, to affirm something subsisting in itself that cannot be pointed to is inconceivable to rational people generally, just as it is inconceivable to affirm something subsisting in another without being an attribute of it.
This is clarified by the fact that bodies differ, according to the sounder of the two views people hold. They share only what is denoted by subsistence in itself and by magnitude accompanied by such subsistence. Just as occupying a spatial location and lying in a direction are inseparable from magnitude as such, rather than from what is peculiar to certain bodies, so too are they inseparable from subsistence in itself as such, rather than from what is peculiar to certain bodies.
If, by the term “body,” you mean something composed of matter and form, or of indivisible substances, as various groups among the speculative theologians and philosophers maintain, then those disputing with you here fall into two categories.
Some say, “He is a body composed of indivisible substances, or of matter and form.” Although their position is false, you have no argument by which to refute it. Indeed, they are better able to refute your position than you are to refute theirs. For the further a position is from the truth