The Muʿtazilites, for their part, pursued this unsound principle of theirs consistently in the debates over the Divine attributes and decree. They ended up describing the Lord by the effects that exist in entities other than Himself. Hence they said: “Whoever perpetrates injustice is unjust; whoever perpetrates foolishness is foolish; whoever perpetrates falsehood is a liar,” and the like. All of this is wrong, for the one to whom such names truly apply is the being in whom those actions subsist, not the one who merely brings them about for someone else or causes them to subsist in another.
The Ashʿarites were unable to refute them on this point—whether in the dispute over the Qurʾan or in the questions of predestination—because they had already conceded that no active attribute can subsist in the Lord: no justice, no beneficence, no influence whatsoever (1). As a result, they were driven to claim that He is described by His effects, so the Qurʾan need not subsist in Him and He may be called by the names of the reprehensible things He created.
Yet Abū Muḥammad ibn Kullāb says (2): “He has always been Generous and Bountiful,” and this has
If that is so, then anyone who asserts this holds that it is a single, eternal meaning subsisting in the essence of Allah, exalted be He; and had he not said so, he would have opposed the consensus. This is the principal argument he relied upon in his work Nihayat al-‘Uqul fi Dirayat al-Usul (manuscript, folio 131).
Sheikh al-Islam (may Allah have mercy on him), after the foregoing, says: “It is weak, for the views on the matter are multiple, except for those of the Muʿtazila and the Kullābiyya.”
See: Darʾ Taʿāruḍ al-ʿAql wa-al-Naql, vol. 2, p. 324; and Majmūʿ al-Rasāʾil of Ibn Taymiyya, vol. 2, p. 9.
(1) They distinguish between attributes of essence and attributes of actions. Thus, “I am Khāliq (Creator), Rāziq (Provider), ʿĀdil (Just), and Muḥsin (Benefactor)” are attributes of essence, not of created actions—such as creation, provision, justice, and benevolence—which could exist alongside their absence; hence this must indicate their distinction from their own essences. See al-Tamhīd by Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī, p. 215.
(2) Al-Ashʿarī states in al-Maqālāt (vol. 1, pp. 257, 260): “ʿAbdullāh ibn Kilāb said, ‘Describing Allah as Karīm (Generous) is not an attribute of action, and Allah has always been Jawād (Most Generous). He affirmed generosity (jud) as an attribute of Allah, neither identical to Him nor distinct from Him.’”