entails the attribute. Its dependence on that attribute means that it can have no reality, or cannot be what it is, without it, and that the attribute’s nonexistence entails its own nonexistence. Yet the attribute’s nonexistence likewise follows from the subject’s nonexistence, and the attribute has neither reality nor existence except through the subject. The attribute’s entailment of the subject—which is what its dependence on the subject means—is stronger than the subject’s entailment of the attribute. Thus, the subject is necessarily existent and does not depend on anything separate from itself. Rather, its need means that it entails the attribute, which in turn entails it. This is true and does not conflict with necessary existence. Indeed, neither necessary nor non-necessary existence can be otherwise.

The nineteenth point: Even if His essence were assumed to entail something separate from Him, whether a spatial location or something else, the nonexistence of that entailed thing, separate from His essence, would entail the nonexistence of that which entails it—namely, His essence. Yet no one has ever said that the Lord of all worlds is therefore dependent on something separate from Him, not even according to the view of those who advocate causation and generation, among whom discussion of the Necessary Existent originated. For they say that He is a complete cause, necessarily entailing