and there is no doubt that this latter distinction is better, for His being the One who brought the world into being entails His self-sufficiency and self-subsistence. Merely knowing that He is self-subsisting, however, does not establish that He is the Maker of the world or the Lord of the heavens and the earth. Nor does it establish that He is distinct from any existing thing not known to have been brought into being, since the necessity of His existence does not in itself rule out the possibility that certain entities were not brought into being.

Then, if they establish that all bodies are contingent, or that the heavens and the earth are all contingent and the necessarily existent being is other than them, or if they establish that there cannot be two necessarily existent beings, all they gain thereby is that the existence shared by Him and other things exists of itself and has no need of an agent. They will thus have likened Him to all other existing things, distinguishing Him from them solely by His independence of anything else.

They may claim that this attribute is negative, or they may claim that it is relational. On either assumption, they will have affirmed for the Lord of all worlds only what they have affirmed for all other existing things. This encompasses every form of associating partners with Allah throughout the worlds. If, however, they claim that it is a positive attribute, they contradict what they have established concerning the oneness of the necessarily existent being