Likewise, when one speaks of the Lord’s existence, His self, His essence, His quiddity, and His reality, these expressions denote what is specific to the Lord: His very self, characterized by His attributes.

As for his statement, “The term ‘existence’ denotes either the Lord’s essence or an additional attribute,” he is told: If you mean the unrestricted, general term ‘existence,’ which encompasses both the necessary and the contingent, it denotes neither what is specific to the necessary nor what is specific to the contingent. Rather, it denotes the shared universal. Yet the shared universal is shared and universal only in the mind and in language; nothing that exists in external reality is itself a universal.

This is like using the terms ‘essence’ and ‘self’ in a sense encompassing both the necessary and the contingent: they denote only the general, universal meaning, not what is specific to either one. Examples include saying, “Existence is divided into necessary and contingent,” or “Essence is divided into necessary and contingent,” and similar expressions.

If, however, ‘existence’ is intended to encompass both together—as when one says, “All existence, both necessary and contingent,” or “Necessary and contingent existence”—then it denotes what is specific to each, just as when one says, “The existence of the necessary and the existence of the contingent.”

In sum, a term may denote only what is shared, as with existence considered as divisible into categories, or only what is distinctive, as in the expressions ‘the existence of the necessary’ and ‘the existence of the contingent’