the falsity of their conclusion, namely their claim that He exists neither within the world nor outside it—with a certainty unmatched by reason’s certainty concerning the premises on which this established conclusion rests. It is therefore impossible for that self-evident rational certainty to be displaced by a conclusion drawn from premises that do not command the same certainty. This holds even before examining whether the premises advanced against that certainty are sound or unsound. The point here is simply that it is neither legitimate nor acceptable in debate to challenge this certainty, firmly rooted in human nature, with what the opponent claims to be inferential proofs. This alone suffices to refute him, even without resolving his specious arguments. Likewise, it suffices to refute a sophist by saying: “What you deny consists of self-evident propositions; their denial cannot therefore be accepted on the strength of the specious inferential arguments you present.”

The second, detailed response is to demonstrate the unsoundness of the arguments offered by those who deny the attributes to establish the possibility of what they claim.

Those who affirm the attributes say:

The arguments you have presented to establish the existence of a being neither within the world nor outside it are the arguments of a sophist. As for the humanity shared by human beings and other such “universals,” these cannot be said to exist outside the mind while being neither within the world nor outside it. They are things established in the mind and in conception. If they are said to exist in external reality, they must be either an entity subsisting in its own right or an attribute subsisting in an entity. Undoubtedly, they do not exist in external reality as unrestricted universals, subject to the unrestrictedness with which they are conceived. Rather, they exist in external reality only as particular, individual instances.