then it is clear that He cannot exist without His own self; all the more, then, He cannot exist without what is included in it.

If it is said, “He depends upon His own self,” this does not mean that His self brings itself into being. The same applies to what is included in it. The expression, however, is misleading and ambiguous; once its meaning is explained, the difficulty disappears.

It may also be said: We do not apply the term “other” to this, so it does not follow that He needs something other than Himself. This concerns the use of language. As for demonstrative proof, the evidence establishes the existence of a self-existent being, with no agent or efficient cause bringing Him into being, and that He is, in Himself, independent of everything distinct from Him.

As for an existence that has no attribute, and whose name includes no positive meaning within its designation—if someone claims that this is what is meant by necessary existence and self-sufficiency, he is told: But this meaning is not what the evidence establishes. Rather, you have assumed that this is what the name designates. Making the term evidence for this meaning will not help you unless that meaning is established as true in itself. You have no evidence for that; indeed, the evidence establishes its opposite.

These people took the terms “the Self-Sufficient,” “the Eternal,” and “the Necessary Existent in Himself” and began interpreting them in senses that entail further meanings incompatible with affirming the attributes. They stretched the language, then imagined that what they had done was what rational and other evidence necessarily required. This is an error on their part.