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As for the claim made by the heretical “philosophers” and others: “If His possessing these attributes entails perfection for Him, then He has been perfected by something other than Himself and is therefore deficient in Himself. But if it entails deficiency for Him, He cannot possess them.”

The answer is this: It has already been explained that the perfection in question is a perfection whose existence is possible and which involves no deficiency. Thus, if someone’s statement that He would be deficient in Himself means that He would be deficient without these attributes, this is true. Yet this is precisely what we sought to avoid, and we established that He must possess the attributes of perfection; otherwise, He would be deficient. If, however, the intended meaning is that He is perfect only through the attributes He possesses, and would therefore not be perfect in His essence stripped of these attributes, then the first response is as follows:

This objection would hold only if an essence devoid of these attributes could exist, or if a perfect essence devoid of these attributes could exist. If either of these is impossible, His perfection without these attributes is impossible—so how much more so if both are impossible? For the existence of a perfect essence without these attributes is impossible. We necessarily know that an “essence” which is not living, knowing, powerful, hearing, seeing, and speaking is not more perfect than an essence which is not living, knowing, hearing, seeing, and speaking. And if sound reason judges that an essence deprived of these attributes is not equal to