the attributes except a privative matter, whereas created things are existent entities—substances and accidents.

It is well known that the entailment of sheer nonexistence by the Necessary Existent or by anything else is not like the entailment of existence, regardless of whether this is called entailment, necessitation, action, or something else. The existence of a thing entails the nonexistence of its opposite, but no rational person says that it produces the nonexistence of its opposite. Likewise, the existence of a thing contradicts its own nonexistence, but no rational person says that its existence produces the nonexistence of its nonexistence (1), for the nonexistence of its nonexistence is its existence, and its existence is necessary: it is neither produced nor caused.

Moreover, sheer nonexistence either has no cause, [as is held] (2) by most rational people, or it may be said that its cause is the absence of the cause of its existence (3), thereby making the cause of nonexistence an absence and assigning no existent cause to the nonexistence of a possible entity. Necessary nonexistence is even less in need of an existent cause. [For necessary nonexistence that follows from a thing’s very essence is a necessary nonexistence and thus needs no existent cause] (4). What is impossible is characterized by necessary nonexistence, and an impossible entity, whose existence is impossible, does not depend upon an existent cause. The nonexistence of the Lord (5) is impossible in itself, just as the Lord’s existence is necessary in itself; His existence therefore has no cause.

The fifth response:

His statement:

“The attributes, states, and judgments (6), notwithstanding the theologians’ differing views concerning them.”