The sixth response is that the meaning of division and composition has already been discussed: they ultimately amount to one thing being distinguishable from another, just as one attribute is distinguishable from another. This must be acknowledged of every existent thing, since nothing can exist without it. If so, whatever existence entails of what they call division and composition is not impossible. Thus, if the argument requires its affirmation, it is affirmed.

The seventh response is as follows: If by its being an accident you mean that it is an attribute subsisting in that which it qualifies, and by its being divisible you mean that it involves some differentiation, then those who affirm Allah’s being above creation accept this. But if by its being an accident you mean that it occurs and then ceases, and by its being divisible and composite you mean that it admits of separation and of coming together after separation, the response is that this describes it in terms of nonexistence after existence and existence after nonexistence. In that case, there is nothing impossible about what necessitates this involving nonexistence. What is impossible is to explain a positive reality—such as vision or the necessary presence of one of two existent attributes—by something involving nonexistence. An attribute involving nonexistence, however, may be explained by another attribute involving nonexistence.

This is clarified by the eighth response: The accident … peculiar to the created being—a substance, according to those who hold this view and distinguish between the Creator’s attribute and the creature’s attribute—is something that cannot persist and must cease to exist after existing. At the very least, it may cease to exist after existing. The created body, meanwhile, is either