nor powerful nor powerless, nor living nor dead, and so forth, as the heretics say, denying both opposing attributes.”

The second argument:

The absence of both these attributes describes what is nonexistent, what has no actual existence in a human being. Thus, when they describe the One they worship in these terms, they make their description of the Creator’s existence equivalent to their description of a created being’s nonexistence. If He may be described by what characterizes a nonexistent created being, it follows that He may be described as nonexistent, just as a created being is described as nonexistent when characterized by the attributes of nonexistence.

The third argument:

[If] such a statement is permissible—if what constitutes an attribute of nonexistence in a created being constitutes existence for Him—then what constitutes ignorance in a created being may constitute knowledge for Him, and what constitutes incapacity in a created being may constitute power for Him.

These arguments all turn on describing Him in terms of impossibility, describing Him as nonexistent, and ascribing to their Lord the opposites of the attributes of perfection, namely ignorance and incapacity. This follows from their allowing Him to be, and declaring Him to be, neither in contact with nor separate from anything, while maintaining that this is impossible for any existent being other than Him. They thus distinguish between the Necessary Being and contingent beings regarding the absence of two attributes that are contradictory in meaning, allowing this absence in the former but not the latter. They must therefore accept the same consequence in analogous cases. These verbal arguments are among the finest rational analogies for anyone who