subsist in something that occupies space; or can only be a bearer of attributes or an attribute; or can only subsist in itself or in something else—is also the reasoning by which it is known that every existent must fall within these same categories. For the innate rational faculty that makes this judgment does not distinguish between one existent and another. Yet once it is believed that this cannot apply to the necessary or eternal existent, that existent is excluded from the classification—not because sound innate disposition and clear reason require its exclusion.

We have not yet discussed the evidence offered to deny this of the Creator, for that belongs to the consideration of counterarguments, which we shall address. The purpose here is simply to show that the very reasoning by which this classification is established for contingent and temporally originated beings also establishes it for existents without qualification. The Mu‘tazilah and their followers exclude the eternal existent from this classification because of the beliefs they hold. This is the position of some philosophers, not all of them; likewise, that is the position of some theologians, not all of them.

Just as the position of these philosophers did not prevent the theologians and those philosophers who agreed with them from adopting this classification, so the position of these theologians does not prevent their opponents among the broad mass of people, theologians, and philosophers from adopting it.