or from among the attributes inhering in it. For solid, compact bodies such as stones can be augmented by attributes that inhere in them, and their attributes can diminish, even though they have no hollow interior.

The twenty-third point: his statement, “This entails that He, exalted is He, is not susceptible to increase or decrease,” may mean either that His essence cannot have anything added to it or taken away from it, or that neither the absence nor the presence of increase and decrease is predicated of His essence. These are the two meanings he mentioned when discussing the description of Him as having no limit, when his opponent said to him, “Do you not say that He is without limit in His essence? Then all the consequences you have imposed on us apply equally to you.” This objection was directed against his argument that, if He were above the Throne, He would be bounded on all