His essence, then, stands in the same position toward the multiplicity of relations as it does toward the sheer negation of all originated things. When one says, “He is not a celestial sphere, nor a star, nor the sun, nor the Garden, nor the Fire, nor air, nor earth, nor an animal, nor a human being, nor a plant,” each of these denials, in their reckoning, is no different from attributing the thing to Him. If such a multitude of negations does not establish multiplicity within His essence, the same must be said of the other case.

Their remark that “the source of A differs from the source of B, and the One together with this emanation differs from the One together with that,” is exactly like saying, “The negation of A from Him differs from the negation of B from Him, and the reality together with the negation of A is not the same as that reality together with the negation of B.” If, then, you hold that a profusion of negations does not entail a plurality of positive attributes in Him, we reply: according to your own principles, a profusion of relations does not do so either.

Next, consider the relations ascribed to Him—His being a cause, an Originator, a Creator, an Agent, and so forth. Either the fact of acting entails that the act is a real, positive entity inhering in Him, or it does not. If the act is a positive entity subsisting in Him, your denial of divine attributes collapses, for He would then be qualified by the very positive perfections from which you seek to flee. If, on the other hand, the act is not positive, it is privative; in that case the multiplicity of effects results only in a multiplicity of privative acts, and a host of privations does not oblige you to affirm any positive attribute of Him. Now, if in your view His being an agent is not a positive attribute, then—still more clearly—His being a recipient is not a positive attribute; hence there is no contradiction in one and the same thing’s being both agent and recipient.

This contradiction has trapped them only because they have turned real existents into non-existents. They have treated the act itself and its causal efficacy as nothing more than a privative relation, and then applied that claim to the most perfect of all agents, the One most entitled to complete existence among all beings. Yet in their so-called “universal science” they have already established that acting and being acted upon are real existents—accidents that belong to the two categories “to act” and “to be acted upon.” “To act” is the act itself, and “to be acted upon” is receptivity. They have even affirmed, with respect to certain natural processes, that the acts involved are existential realities. Nevertheless, when they turned to divine science they contradicted the very principles they had laid down elsewhere.