and all its affairs come about through His will and command?

The seventeenth point: Your statement, “It follows that the Creator is deficient in Himself and derives His perfection from something other than Himself,” holds only if spatial location and direction are other than Him. That, in turn, would hold only if spatial location and direction were something separate from Him. But if spatial location is His limit and boundary, while direction is His being such that He can be pointed to, then there would be nothing here that is other than Him, according to those who affirm the attributes and maintain that His attributes are not other than Him.

For anyone who calls this “other,” saying that He derives His perfection from something other than Himself would be like saying that He derives His perfection from His knowledge, power, and life. This is equivalent to saying that He derives His perfection from Himself. This is not impossible; rather, it is necessary. Discussion of His perfection is like discussion of His existence.

We have already discussed the statement, “He is necessary in Himself,” and the attributes encompassed by it, explaining that He cannot exist without the attributes proper to His essence. Indeed, nothing whatsoever can exist otherwise. Thus, to posit their absence is to deny all existing things. We have also discussed the terms “other,” “spatial location,” “dependence,” and the like. The same applies to