undisputed, as is His precedence over His creation. Rather, the point is that His separateness goes beyond separateness in essence and separateness in time, and that the difference between Him and creation is more complete than the difference between an inhering entity and its substrate. He himself affirmed this, even though these two are distinct in essence, as explained above.

Now, if these people have demonstrated that the separateness he mentioned entails separateness in place and time—since both the substrate and what inheres in it share this kind of separateness, which does not preclude one from inhering in the other—then there must be separateness in some further respect. This can only be separateness in place and time. Thus, if the separateness between Him and His creation is not merely in essence and time, and he has affirmed this separateness, then what he said reinforces their argument.

The second point concerns his statement: “And just as the Creator differs from the world