For those men made the two existences a single existence, whereas this man made the Creator’s very knowledge and the existence of created beings one and the same. The former is thus a unity involving His existence; the latter, a unity involving His knowledge and the existence of created beings.

There is no doubt that the Christians’ doctrine of union and indwelling is more intelligible than the position of these men. For the Christians hold that the Word—which they regard as a substance—came to be united with Christ, whereas these men identify His very knowledge, which is inseparable from Him and has always existed and will always exist, with all created things themselves.

We shall explain the falsity of the premises he borrowed and the conclusions he drew from them.

As for his statement:

“Just as the intellective being, in apprehending its own essence, needs no form other than the form of its essence by which it is what it is, so too, in apprehending what proceeds from its essence through itself, it needs no form other than the form of that which proceeds from it, by which that thing is what it is.”

[First argument]

The response is:

Both premises are disputed. We do not concede that, in apprehending its own essence, it needs no form other than the form of its essence. Nor do we concede that, if this were so, it would need no form, in apprehending what proceeds from it, other than the form of that which proceeds from it.

He has predecessors for the first premise. A number of earlier and later philosophers, such as al-Suhrawardī, who was executed, based upon it their discussion of the question of