Likewise, their claim that every genus is a composite of intrinsic, essential attributes—attributes that constitute its very quiddity, some of them shared, others distinctive—is rejected by the majority of rational people even with respect to created things. How, then, could it be affirmed of the Creator?!

As for the Lord—exalted be He—being described by His attributes of perfection, this does not amount to the kind of composition found in created entities. When one says of a single creature that it is existent, living, knowing, and powerful, no one understands this to be a composition in the sense of a whole fashioned from separate parts. Even if, by their own terminology, they choose to call such description “composition,” or merely imagine it to be so, their terminology and conjecture cannot compel us to strip the Lord of the attributes of perfection that are His due, nor can it oblige us to posit a mere, absolute existence that has no reality outside the mind. Any being conceived purely in the mind would then be deemed more perfect than that! Exalted is He, far above what the wrongdoers allege.

The point here is that those who assert the world’s eternity—even while conceding an Originator—rest their affirmation of that Originator on a feeble argument; indeed, their doctrine necessarily entails the negation of the Creator. This was the view commonly held by most theologians regarding the advocates of the world’s pre-eternity: that they deny the Maker. In the majority of theological works, nothing is quoted from them except this denial. Only those who transmitted the words of Ibn Sīnā and the like began to attribute to them two positions: outright denial of the Maker, and the claim that the world is necessary through a cause that necessarily produces it. By this they confused some people; yet the outright denial of the Maker is far more ruinous to minds and faiths than even that latter assertion.