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Part One · Chapter Fifty-One — Introduction to the Problem of Divine Attributes
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In existence there are many things that are clear and evident — among them first intelligibles and sensory data, and others close to these. If a person were left to himself he would not need any proof for them, such as the existence of motion, the existence of volitional capacity in a human being, the manifestation of generation and corruption, and the nature of things patent to the senses like the heat of fire and the cold of water — and many similar things. But since certain strange opinions arose — either from error, or from deliberate intent for some reason — which contradicted the nature of existence and denied something sensory, or sought to give the impression of the existence of what does not exist — the learned were compelled to affirm those evident things and to invalidate the existence of those supposed things, just as we find Aristotle proving the existence of motion when it was denied, and demonstrating the invalidity of the atom when its existence was affirmed.
And of this same kind is the negation of essential attributes from God, exalted be He.
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For the matter is a first intelligible — namely, that the attribute is other than the essence of the thing described, and that it is some state of the essence; thus it is an accident. If the attribute is identical with the essence of the thing described, then the attribute is a mere repetition in speech — as if you said 'the man is the man'; or it is an explanation of a name — as if you said 'the man is the rational animal,' for the rational animal is the essence and reality of the man, and there is no third meaning: the man is not the animal and the rational; it is the man who is described by life and rational speech — rather, the meaning of this attribute is merely an explanation of a name, as if you said that the thing whose name is 'man' is the thing composed of life and rational speech.
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It has thus been shown that an attribute cannot but be one of two cases: either it is identical with the essence of the thing described — in which case it is merely an explanation of a name, and we do not prohibit that concerning God from this angle but from another angle, as will be explained — or the attribute is other than the thing described: it is a meaning additional to the thing described, which entails that the attribute is an accident of that essence. The mere removal of the name 'accident' from the attributes of the Creator does not remove the meaning; for every meaning additional to the essence is something attached to it and not constitutive of its reality, and this is the meaning of 'accident' — in addition to the entailment that many things would be eternal, were the attributes many. And there is no genuine unity except by the belief in one simple essence with no composition, no multiplicity of meanings, but a single meaning from whichever direction you look at it, and by whatever consideration you consider it, you will find it one — not divisible into two meanings in any way or by any cause — nor is there any multiplicity found in it, neither outside the mind nor in the mind, as will be demonstrated in this treatise.
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The position of some speculative thinkers has reached the point of saying that His attributes, exalted be He, are neither His essence nor something external to His essence. This resembles the saying of others — the 'states' theorists — who mean by 'states' that the universal concepts are neither existent nor nonexistent. And it resembles the saying of others that the atom is in no place yet occupies space; and that a human being has no action whatever, yet has acquisition. All these are statements that are only spoken — they exist in words, not in minds, let alone having existence outside the mind. Yet, as you know — and as every person who does not deceive himself knows — they become entrenched through the proliferation of speech and obscured analogies, and are validated by shouting and denunciations, and by many compounded forms of dialectic and sophistry. But when the one who says them and argues for them by these methods returns to himself privately with his belief, he finds nothing but confusion and deficiency — because he strives to find what does not exist and to create an intermediary between two contraries that have no intermediary. Is there an intermediary between the existent and the nonexistent? Or between the case that two things — one of them is the other, or it is other than it?
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What led to this was what we have mentioned: the following of imagination. Since everything conceived is always, from all existing bodies, an essence possessing something, and every essence among them necessarily has attributes — and we have never found a bodily essence stripped in its existence of any attribute — this imagination was followed and it was supposed that He, exalted be He, is likewise composed of two meanings: His essence and the meanings additional to the essence. So some followed the analogy and believed Him a body with attributes; and some elevated themselves above this path and negated bodiliness yet retained the attributes. All of this was brought about by following the external sense of the books of revelation, as will be explained in chapters coming on these matters.