…and the effect together with its attributes, although it derives from the cause, is in no sense the cause of those attributes.

Third point: We do not concede that anything possessing attributes is ever an efficient cause of its own attribute. Rather, it is no more than the locus in which those attributes subsist. If the subject in question is the Lord of all worlds, then there is no agent for His attributes just as there is no agent for His Essence. If the subject is created, the very One who brings its essence into existence is the One who brings its attributes into existence. To claim that the essence itself efficiently produces its attributes is certainly false.

Its falsity becomes evident when we recall that we are speaking of inseparable attributes—those that never leave their subject. An entity can only exercise agency after such attributes already exist, so it is impossible for it to be their originator. As for what they call “constitutive attributes,” they hold that these constitute the essence and are not preceded by it, functioning, as it were, like a cause. Thus they have made some inseparable attributes—the constitutive ones—the cause of the essence, and the others—the non-constitutive inseparable attributes—its effects. Both claims are wrong: none of the subject’s inseparable attributes is a cause of the essence, nor is any of them caused by the essence. They are simply attributes inhering in the essence, and whoever creates the essence creates its attributes, provided that the essence itself belongs among created things.

The One who created the human being also created ḥayawāniyya (animality), nāṭiqiyya (rationality), ḍāḥikiyya (the capacity to laugh), and other such qualities in him. Not one of these attributes predates the human essence, serves as its matter, or acts as its cause; nor is any one of them produced by that essence. Rather, they are attributes that inhere in the human being and are inseparable from him, and the Creator who brought him into existence created these necessary attributes as well. The same holds true for all other creatures.

Fourth point: What do you mean when you say, “That described quiddity necessitates its attributes”? If you mean that it merely entails them, then every pair of correlatives is like that, as has already been shown, and it is invalid to claim that only certain correlatives were meant. But if you mean that the quiddity actively produces the inherence, then among quiddities there is nothing that produces any of its attributes.

Second approach: Even if we grant that the quiddity necessitates the consequent—whether in the sense that it is its cause, as was alleged, or in the sense that the consequent is simply inseparable from it, which is what is actually the case—the fact that the antecedent is antecedent and the consequent consequent is beyond dispute. What is not established, however, is that the antecedent brings the consequent into being or is its efficient cause…