concurrent with it, it is not prior to it; thus the two opposites cannot coexist. This becomes clear from the examples they give, the best known being the sun and its rays. By “rays,” they may mean either the light inherent in the sun itself or the light present in bodies facing the sun, which they call rays—namely, reflected light.

If they mean the light inherent in the sun itself, then this is one of its attributes, and the sun is not prior to it in any respect. Whoever makes the Creator’s priority over the world like the priority of the sun itself over its attribute has thereby made created things like an attribute of the Creator and made the Creator a substrate for created things. This is more repugnant than the view of those who say that the Creator indwells created things. Our purpose here is only to show that the position of the former is more repugnant than that of the latter. Yet, besides the greater repugnance of their position, they thereby make the Maker both a substrate for created things in this respect and indwelling in them.

If, however, by rays they mean the light present in bodies facing the sun—walls, the earth, the air, and so forth—then the response is: these rays do not come into being merely through the sun, nor is the sun alone a cause that produces them. Rather, two things are indispensable: the first is the sun, and the second is another body