—so that whatever is necessary for Him would likewise be necessary for it, and whatever is impossible for Him would be impossible for it? Or do you only mean that He is endowed with something that bears a degree of resemblance?

If you claim the first, it is both inadmissible and impossible. When people say that God has knowledge and power and that the creature also has knowledge and power, they do not maintain that the two kinds of knowledge and the two kinds of power are identical, such that whatever must be affirmed of one must be affirmed of the other, whatever is impossible for one is impossible for the other, and whatever is possible for one is possible for the other. The falsity of that notion is self-evident.

True, some who affirm certain attributes while denying others—such as those who acknowledge for God knowledge and power yet deny His pleasure, anger, face, and hand—may declare that there is no difference between our knowledge and God’s knowledge, our hearing and God’s hearing, our sight and God’s sight, except that ours are originated while His are eternal.

His sole purpose in saying this is to evade the argument advanced by those who affirm all the attributes. They tell him: “Just as you have affirmed for God knowledge, power, hearing, and sight—while insisting that His hearing and sight are not like ours, nor His knowledge and power like ours—so you must also affirm for Him pleasure, anger, a face, and a hand, all without likening them to our pleasure, anger, faces, or hands.”

In response, he seeks—so he imagines—to draw a distinction by alleging that the two descriptions are actually identical: that the only difference between the two knowledges and the two powers is the contrast between eternality and origination. By the same logic, he contends, there should be no difference between the two faces and the two hands except that very contrast; therefore God’s face and hand would have to be bodily organs. He extends the same flawed reasoning to all the other attributes as well.