and necessitates and entails His creatures, just as He is an efficient cause of, necessitates, and entails His attributes.

[Response] (1)

The fourth response is this: His statement,

“According to the philosophers, these are those relational and negative matters,”

represents only the view of those among them who deny the attributes, such as Aristotle and his followers. The great masters of philosophy, however, affirm the attributes, as we have cited their statements elsewhere. The same is true of many of their later leading authorities, such as Abū al-Barakāt and others like him.

Moreover, those among them who deny the attributes, such as Ibn Sīnā and his like, are self-contradictory: they combine denying them with affirming them, as [the discussion of them] (2) has been set out at length elsewhere. If they affirm them, they are like all others who affirm the attributes. But if they deny them, it should be said to them:

Negation is sheer nonexistence. As for a relation—such as His being an agent or a principle (3)—it must be either existence or nonexistence. If it is existence, because it belongs to the category of

“acting and being acted upon”

—which is among the ten highest genera into which existent things are divided—then the relation by which He is described is something existent. His relational attributes would therefore be existent realities subsisting in Him. But if the relation (4) is sheer nonexistence, it falls under negation. It is thus erroneous to make relation a third category that is neither existence nor nonexistence.

Accordingly, if (5) they affirm no positive attribute, His essence would not entail anything (6) of