goes back (1) to the wording rather than to the attribute itself, and this was the doctrine of Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Qalānsī.
The teacher—meaning Abū Isḥāq—said: “As for the two eyes, the term is a metaphor for sight, and the intellect provides evidence for that. Concerning the hand and the face (2), our colleagues have differed over the route by which they are affirmed.
Some maintained that the intellect indicates the existence of two attributes: by one of them creatures are specially chosen in the act of creation, and by the other they are selected through nearness in speech and communication. Yet the intellect offers no proof for how these attributes should be named, so revelation came to clarify the matter: it called the attribute by which election in creation occurs a ‘hand,’ and the attribute by which nearness in speech is realized a ‘face.’
They added: Since sound reason recognizes a distinction (3) in creating and acting (4) by direct intervention and ennoblement, and in bringing near by turning toward, it therefore became obligatory (5) to affirm for Him an attribute that makes what we have described possible, without direct contact or spatial adjacency. Revelation accordingly designated one of them ‘hand’ and the other ‘face.’
Whoever follows this (6) path says that the intellect permits no more than this to be affirmed through revelation, and anything else that is publicly proclaimed about Him (7) comes by way of solitary reports that do not yield certain knowledge. It is not permissible on the basis of such reports to establish an attribute for the Eternal One (8); and if something of that sort is confirmed through a transmission that does yield certainty, it must be construed as referring to an act, not to an inherent attribute.