They are told: “When you assert that He is the Necessary Existent, and that He is simultaneously intellect, the one who understands, and the intelligible; the lover and the beloved; the delightful, the one who delights, and the delight itself—does not the idea of each of these differ from the idea of the others? These are multiple, distinct concepts in the mind; by your own criterion this would be composition, yet you affirm it and call it tawḥīd (pure monotheism).

If they respond, ‘In reality this is true oneness and not an impossible composition,’

the reply is: ‘Likewise, for the Divine Essence to be characterized by its inseparable attributes is genuine oneness and not an impossible composition.

It is plain to sound reason that the meaning of a thing’s being knowing is not the meaning of its being powerful, nor is its very essence identical with its being knowing and powerful. Whoever allows one attribute to be the same as another, or the attribute to be identical with the One described by it, ranks among the worst of sophists and falls into self-contradiction. For if he grants that, he must also grant that this existence is that existence, so that existence becomes numerically one, not merely one in kind.

Accordingly, if the existence of the contingent were identical with the existence of the Necessary, then the existence of every created being—which perishes after coming to be and comes to be after not existing—would be identical with the existence of the Eternal, Ever-lasting Reality who is utterly beyond annihilation.”