from a drop of fluid, then a clot, then a lump of flesh. Yet it is still possible to detach some of his limbs from others, and one can conceive that once he dies he decomposes, part of him turning to dust and part to air, so that his limbs and humors disperse. The same holds true for every animal and plant, and it is self-evident that no rational person would, on that basis, describe the Creator as a “composite.”
As for labeling the One who is qualified by His attributes a composite—calling the Living, All-Knowing, All-Powerful One, who is characterized by life, knowledge, and power, a “compound”—that is merely their own convention. None of the revealed laws, none of the languages, and none of the minds of the great mass of rational people has ever regarded such a thing as “composition,” nor given it that name.
If they say, “We call it composition because it involves affirming multiple meanings for a single Essence; we therefore name it composition and advance a rational proof of its impossibility,” the answer is: the discussion then pertains to intelligible concepts, not to the words transmitted in language. We do not concede that a human being is a compound of ‘animality’ and ‘rationality,’ nor that anything in existence is composed of purely intellectual parts. What is compounded of conceptual parts exists only in the mind, not in external reality. Everything found in the external world that is composite is made up of sensible parts that exist outside the mind.
People have differed about the body. Some say it is composed of sensible parts—individual substances; others that it is composed of conceptual parts, namely matter and form; and a third group holds that it is composed of neither. These are three opinions. In our judgment, the third is the correct one; next comes the view that it is composed of sensible parts; the most unsound of the three is the view that it is composed of conceptual parts, as has been explained elsewhere.
Accordingly, if someone claims that the Creator is a body and that a body is composed of either sensible or conceptual parts, then demonstrating the falsity of such composition is, against him, a valid line of argument, for it proceeds on the very premise he himself has adopted.