these existing things, or any one of them, it would take His place and stand in His stead with respect to beginninglessness, bringing things into being, attributes, creation, and the other attributes of the Beginningless One, glorified is He. Moreover, if He resembled them in any respect, He would need what they need: places in which to subsist and to which to move. Those places would likewise necessarily be beginningless, since the beings occupying them would be beginningless. This would entail either that the world is beginningless or that the Beginningless One came into existence. Both are impossible, so whatever leads to them is impossible.”

I say: Another group understands the Christian doctrine of hypostases as referring to parts and portions. Yet their account does not state that the Christians hold that begetting necessarily entails the separation of one part from another, as the former group reports. It was stated by