the Essence itself is necessarily existent apart from the attributes is inadmissible and false. It is equivalent to someone saying:

“The attributes are necessarily existent apart from the Essence, but the Essence is necessary in view of the necessary existence of the attributes.”

It makes no difference whether they(1) define the “necessarily existent” as “the existent itself”(2), as that which does not admit nonexistence, as that which has neither an agent nor an efficient cause, or in some similar manner. The two differ only if “necessary” is defined as that which subsists in itself and “contingent” as that which subsists in another. It is well known, however, that defining the terms in this way is false and purely arbitrary. At most, it amounts to a pointless verbal dispute.

The seventh point:

His statement, “It is thus established that causal efficacy does not depend upon prior nonexistence,” may be answered(3) as follows: This is valid only if the Essence that entails its attributes is itself what exerts the causal effect upon those attributes.

In that case, if “causal efficacy” is intended to mean entailment, then each affects the other, since each entails the other. It would therefore follow that each is necessary in itself and not contingent(4), which is false. If, however, “causal efficacy” means that one of them originated the other, produced it, or caused it to exist—or some similar expression whose meaning is intelligible(5) when speaking of bringing created things into being—then this is false.

No rational person would say that a thing possessing attributes originated its own inseparable attributes(6), created them, produced them, brought them about, caused them to exist, or use any similar expression conveying this meaning.