and said:

“I do not concede that He is self-subsistent except in the sense that He has no need of a substrate.”

He thus made His self-subsistence a negative rather than a positive attribute, and this consequence follows for all the others as well.

It is known that a thing’s self-subsistence is more substantial than its subsistence in something else. If an accident subsisting in something else cannot be merely negative, then a body’s self-subsistence is even less capable of being so. If a created thing is self-subsistent, it is known that this is an attribute of perfection distinguishing a body from an accident. How, then, can the Creator of all things be characterized by nothing but this attribute of perfection?

Rather, neither His self-subsistence nor His subsistence in something else has any meaning but a negative one. The created thing thus possesses a real attribute of perfection, whereas the Creator is characterized only by something negative. The created thing therefore possesses a positive attribute of perfection, while the Creator is characterized solely by something negative. Negation can never be an attribute of perfection unless it entails something positive. Whatever is neither existence nor a perfection in existence is not a perfection. If self-subsistence entails nothing positive, but means nothing more than pure negation, it is not an attribute of perfection. His lack of dependence on anything else is something negative, and unless something negative entails a positive attribute, it is not an attribute of perfection. Pure nonexistence has no need of a substrate, and any attribute that He does not share with what is nonexistent is not an attribute of perfection.

As for the second group, they agree with you that the Maker of the world is composed neither of indivisible substances nor of matter and form, and therefore is not a body.

In that case, your statement:

“A body’s being confined to a spatial location and a direction may be