He treated existence as the supreme act or perfection of being in God as well as in created things, reserved the creative act to God alone, denied the presence of matter in angels, and thus distinguished between God and created beings by positing that only in created beings is existence distinct from essence.
Only existence, which in itself is distinct from essence, adds universality or particularity, depending upon whether "horseness" exists in the mind, that is, as a universal, or in the exernal world, that is, as a particular.
Were God to know immediately the plurality of creatable objects (essences), His simplicity and unity (divine knowledge is not really distinct from divine essence) would be irremediably compromised.
Henry believed that the powers of the soul were "intentionally", not really, distinct from its essence.
In al-Ghazâlî God's will, which is distinct from His essence, necessitates all beings and events in creation.
On the other hand, if God did not have access to the multiplicity of all that is distinct from His essence, He would not know anything.
He also holds against many of his contemporaries that the powers of the soul are really distinct from the essence of the soul and from one another (Wippel, 1981, 176 84, 202 7).
He maintains that there is no real distinction between essence and being (as Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome had taught), but that they are only intentionally distinct.
Second, using abhi in the sense of preponderance and distinction, abhidharma has also been deemed a distinct, higher teaching; the essence of the Buddha's teachings or that which goes beyond what is given in the Buddha's discourses, in a sense somewhat reminiscent of the term "metaphysics" (e.g., Dhs-a 2 3; Horner 1941; von Hinüber 1994).
Ideas are not distinct from God's essence, though they are distinct from the essences of the things God creates (De veritate, q. 2, a. 3).
