The heretical philosophers pressed their denial of the divine attributes to the limit by rejecting even the very notion of composition. They claimed that there are five kinds of composition, all of which must be negated concerning God.

First: the composition of existence and quiddity. Hence, they say, God can possess no reality other than pure, unqualified existence, for were He to have a reality distinct from that, it would itself be described by existence. In that case Necessary Existence would depend upon and be an effect of that reality, and what is necessary would thereby become caused.

Second: the composition of the universal and the particular, such as the composition of a species from genus and differentia; this, too, must be negated.

Third: the composition of essence and attributes, which likewise must be denied. These three, they claim, are modes of qualitative composition.