If it is said, “He is dependent upon Himself,” this does not mean that His self brings itself into being; the same applies to whatever is included in His self. The expression, however, is ambiguous and liable to mislead; once its intended meaning is explained, the objection disappears.

It may also be said: We do not apply the term “other” to this, so it does not follow that He is in need of another. This concerns verbal usage. As for substantive proof, the evidence establishes the existence of a being who exists by Himself, with neither an agent nor an efficient cause, and who is self-sufficient and independent of everything distinct from Him.

As for an existence that has no attribute and whose designation includes no affirmative meaning, if someone claims that this is what is meant by necessary existence and self-sufficiency, he is told: This meaning is not what the evidence indicates. Rather, you have merely assumed that it is the referent of the term. Treating the term itself as evidence for this meaning is of no benefit unless the meaning is first established as true in itself, and you have no evidence for that. On the contrary, the evidence indicates its opposite.

These people took the terms “self-sufficiency,” “eternal,” and “necessary in itself” and interpreted them in senses whose implications contradict the affirmation of the attributes. They adopted expansive terminology and then imagined that what they had done was required by rational and other forms of evidence. This was their error.

What rational proofs entail is not learned from mere expressions, while what scriptural proofs entail is learned from the speaker’s customary manner of discourse, not from a newly invented convention. No one may therefore say, “The terms occurring in the Quran have been assigned certain meanings,” and then seek to interpret what Allah intended according to those meanings. This is the practice of the fabricating heretics.

For these people took certain meanings that they supposed to be established and made them the meaning of “the One,”