and more perfect still. How, then, can the capacity for action and for intellectually apprehending lowly things be a perfection, while the actualization of that capacity—the action and intellection themselves—is not a perfection?

But it may be said:

Whatever cannot exist eternally and can only come into existence anew admits of perfection only in being brought into existence, not in being produced from eternity. If it is supposed that His knowledge of a thing as existent can only be realized after that thing exists, then His knowing it as existent after its existence is more perfect than His not knowing it as existent, even if He knows that it will exist.

As for Abū al-Barakāt’s statement, “He did not become perfect through His action and intellection; rather, He acted and apprehended intellectually by virtue of His perfection,” this is correct if perfection means what belongs eternally to His essence, with no possibility of new individual instances arising, just as its kind cannot newly arise.

But if perfection is understood to encompass every perfection that can exist, in the manner in which it can exist, then it may be said:

His perfection is through Himself and His essence, and His self includes the attributes and actions that subsist in Him. Thus, He has not become perfect through anything separate from Him.

Whatever falls within what His name denotes is not separate from Him, nor is it described without qualification as other than Him.

Accordingly, His perfection through this is like His perfection through His essence and His inseparable attributes. Whatever comes into existence when wisdom requires it to do so, in the manner possible for it, is a perfection at that time, not at any other time. This comes about solely through Himself and for Himself, not through another or for another.

On this basis, if it is said:

“If He were to apprehend intellectually, perfection would accrue to Him.”