existent unless its effect exists, while its effect depends on it. Thus, describing a cause that necessitates by its very essence as dependent on its effect amounts to saying that the cause cannot exist without its effect existing. This does not entail that the Necessary Existent is contingent.

The twenty-third point: His statement, “Whatever depends on something intrinsically contingent must, all the more, be intrinsically contingent.”

The response is: If dependence means what your argument ultimately amounts to—namely, that what is necessarily existent in itself entails the existence of something intrinsically contingent and is itself necessary for that contingent thing, and that, despite needing it, it is what necessitates it—then the reality of the matter is that the Necessary Existent in Himself necessitates or brings into existence what He needs. This does not entail that He needs something independent of Him, nor that He is contingent. Indeed, it does not even entail that He needs anything other than Himself, for His essence is what necessitates everything He needs. Thus, He has no need of anything other than Himself in any respect.

All this is on the assumption that we call these relations need and dependence, as you claim. If, however, He needed something contingent that was independent of Him in any respect, this would imply contingency in Him. But if that thing depends on Him in every respect and is not independent of Him, then needing something that subsists only through Him is like needing Himself. This does not contradict His necessary existence in Himself. Rather, the very reality of what is necessarily existent in itself is that it cannot dispense with itself and exists only through itself, whether or not you call this dependence on itself.

This argument concerns matters that have