and to discourage such questioning.

This is for three reasons:

First, grasping this meaning—namely, that He is not a body, which is the truth—is not merely one, two, or three steps removed from what is self-evident. You can see this from the methods the speculative theologians have followed in this matter.

They say that the proof that He is not a body is that every body has been shown to have come into being. When asked how one establishes that every body has come into being, they follow the method we have mentioned: arguing from the coming into being of accidents, and from the principle that whatever is inseparable from things that come into being must itself have come into being. It has already become clear to you from our discussion that this method is not demonstrative. Even if it were demonstrative, most ordinary people would lack the natural capacity to grasp it.

Indeed, these people’s postulate that He—glorified is He—is an essence with attributes additional to that essence does more to affirm that He is a body than their argument that He has not come into being does to deny His corporeality. This, then,