reverence for Allah that precludes His being so, he would be told: “This same innate disposition holds that Allah Most High is above the universe. It finds the claim that He is neither above the universe, nor within it, nor outside it just as impossible as the claim that He is the size of an indivisible atom. If what the innate disposition affirms in the latter case is true, then so is what it affirms in the former.

“He would then have no argument, whether rational or transmitted, against His being the size of an indivisible atom. For transmitted evidence consists of either scriptural texts or consensus. As for the scriptural passages in which Allah describes Himself as High, Magnificent, and Great, they understand these descriptions to mean power and dominance, not the greatness of His own being. On their interpretation, therefore, these descriptions do not rule out the smallness of size they allege—especially given their reliance on the claim that an immense angel and an immense human being can be the size of an indivisible atom, because life and its necessary concomitant inhere only in something of that size, as explained earlier.

“If they have no evidence for this, the arguments he has presented are invalid. Their inability to establish that Allah is above smallness of size thus becomes apparent, just as they have been unable to establish that Allah Most High is free of deficiency. On the basis of their rational principles, they can establish neither His freedom from deficiency nor His transcendence above smallness.”

Seventeenth response: His statement in the second argument, “His occupying that spatial region is either necessary or contingent.”

The reply is: If by “spatial region” is meant that which