I said to the eminent Shafiʿi who addressed me, “I shall (1) demonstrate that what I have put forward is the doctrine of the early generations, the position of the leading authorities among al-Shafiʿi’s followers. I will cite the statements of al-Ashʿari and of the foremost among his disciples that refute these opponents, so that every Shafiʿi—and everyone who espouses the Ashʿari view that agrees with the way of the Salaf—may find support. I shall also show that the opinion ascribed to him regarding the figurative interpretation of the scriptural attributes has no foundation in his own words; it is merely the view of a faction among his adherents. Within Ashʿarism there are two stances, but al-Ashʿari himself held only one.

Later, when I remarked in the gathering that all of God’s names which are likewise applied (2) to created beings—such as the term “existence,” which is predicated in its literal sense of both the Necessary Being and the contingent being (3)—two senior scholars (4) began to dispute whether the predicate is used homonymously or univocally.

One of them said that it is univocal, while the other maintained that it is [ق 86] homonymous, so that composition would not be entailed.

The latter added, “Fakhr al-Din has pointed out that this disagreement (5) hinges on whether His existence is identical to His essence or not. Thus, whoever holds that the existence of every thing is identical to its essence says that the predicate is homonymous, whereas whoever holds that His existence is something additional to His essence says that it is predicated univocally.”