is to be declared free only of equality with them in these respects. Yet that is not so.

The Eighteenth Argument

Regarding your statement:

“For He, exalted is He, is not equal to these essences in being susceptible to combination, separation, change, extinction, health, illness, life, and death,”

you may be answered as follows: None of these deficiencies is possible for Him, whether in a form in which He would equal these essences or in one in which He would differ from them. Rather, He is free of all such deficiencies, great or small, and of every conceivable form of these kinds, even if He would not thereby be equal to these essences. For equality with these essences can concern only what actually exists in them. Moreover, saying that one thing is equal to another suggests that it is like it in that respect, such that the two are on an equal footing. It is not permissible to restrict the negation to either of these two meanings without justification.

By “equality” in this regard, he may mean merely sharing in these things; but the wording is ambiguous. By using such expressions in this connection, he has fallen [into] many errors of meaning, as we shall explain in the remainder of the discussion of the similarity of bodies, or elsewhere. Moreover, these things are impossible for Him even without the existence of these