and they claim that a distinction exists. If their claimed distinction is valid, well and good; otherwise, this argument counts against them on both questions. This presents no insuperable difficulty, as the analogous case discussed earlier shows.

As for his statement in the fourth argument:

“Of any two existing things in the observable world, one must either be co-located with the other or spatially separate from it. Whatever is spatially separate must be either an indivisible atom or a composite of atoms. Everything in the observable world falls into one of these three categories—an accident, an indivisible atom, or a composite body—and this must be due to existence itself. The Creator must therefore fall into one of these three categories. Yet these people deny this, since, according to them, He is neither an accident, nor an atom, nor a body composed of parts and portions.”

The reply is: As for calling His attributes accidents, some of them have indeed called His attributes accidents, although the dispute over this is merely verbal. For when the Jahmiyyah—the Muʿtazilah and others who deny the attributes—saw that attributes subsist in bodies and are also accidents, and used them, or some of them, to argue