just as knowledge, power, hearing, sight, and speech in us entail deficiencies and needs from which Allah must be declared transcendent.

Likewise, our existence and self-subsistence entail our need for a Creator who brings us into existence, whereas Allah’s existence is exalted above the needs upon which ours depends. We, our attributes, and our actions are all bound to need others. Need is intrinsic to us and we can never be free of it, while His freedom from all need—glory be to Him—is intrinsic to Him, and He can never cease to possess it. He is in and of Himself Ever-Living, Self-Sustaining, and necessarily existent, whereas we are inherently needy and destitute.

Thus, although our essences, attributes, and actions—and the perfections we possess, such as knowledge, power, and the like—are bound to need, origination, and contingency, it does not follow that Allah has no essence, attributes, or actions, or that He has neither power nor knowledge, simply because these things are inseparable from need in our case. Likewise, even if mercy and other attributes were assumed to be inseparable from need and weakness in our case, it would not follow that they are inseparable from them with respect to Allah.

Moreover, we know by necessity that if we suppose two beings—one of whom shows mercy to another, bringing him benefit and warding harm away from him, while the other is indifferent to both and possesses nothing that would prompt him to bring benefit or ward away harm—the first is more perfect.