an effect (1) of His being described as beneficent, for what He brings into existence is itself His attribute. The same reasoning applies to calling Him a Maker, for He is so designated because He knows the reality of that which is made, not because the act of making (2) is identical with the product. Likewise, describing Him as a Scribe is analogous to describing Him as a Maker, for writing stands (3) in the place of craftsmanship: it is a category of knowledge concerning the modalities of the object acted upon in bringing His act into existence, and this is something other than the product itself. This is clear and evident.

I say: This objection (4) about the titles Beneficent, Scribe, Just, Creator, and the like is a well-known argument that the Muʿtazila press against the affirmers. Its underlying premise is that speech must subsist in the speaker, so they charged them with the so-called “names of actions.” It is precisely this question that unsettled the proof for Abu al-Maʿali al-Juwayni, al-Razi, and others when the Muʿtazila confronted them (5) with it. For this reason Abu al-Maʿali abandoned the argument and said (6):

“It is agreed that He, exalted is He, speaks with His Speech, and that some form of particularization is required when attributing speech to Him. Such particularization is either that the speech subsists in Him, or that it is merely the relation of an action to its agent. The latter is invalid, for there is no distinction between the creation of bodies and other accidents and the creation of speech: none of what He creates truly returns to the Eternal, exalted be He, as an attribute inhering in Him.”

I say: In this he did not commit himself to the rule that whenever an attribute subsists in a locus its ruling necessarily applies to that locus, so as to avoid the counter-arguments. Instead, he maintained that it disappears