Thus, if His creating some creatures through others does not entail His need for His creatures, nor contradict His being the One on whom all depend, independent of all besides Himself, how could His creating Adam with His hand and grasping the earth and the heavens with His hand entail His need for another? It is well known that acting with one’s own hand is further removed from dependence on others than acting through things one has made.

The third response is that this argument is of the same kind as the argument used by the thoroughgoing Jahmiyyah to deny the attributes. Their assertion, “If He had knowledge, power, life, and speech, He would need knowledge, power, and speech in order to know, exercise power, and speak,” is equivalent to this person’s assertion, “If He had a hand, He would need that hand in order to act, and that contradicts His being the One on whom all depend.” Whatever answer he gives the former can therefore be given to him on behalf of the latter. Indeed, this applies with even greater force here, since, as explained earlier, He is able to create and act both with His hand and without His hand, whereas it is impermissible to say that He knows without knowledge or has power without power. If the affirmation of attributes entails His need for them, then the need is greater in the case of these attributes. If it does not entail His need for them, the argument is invalid.

The fourth response is that the Self-Sufficient, the One on whom all depend, is independent of His creatures and the things He has made. It is not correct to say that He is independent of His own self and essence, as explained earlier. His attributes, Most High, are not external to His essence. Thus, the existence of His attributes and His acting through them are like the existence of His essence and His acting through it. We have already discussed what is involved in