made obligatory upon the servant once he reaches puberty, and it is the very proof he employed to argue that bodies are created because accidents inhere in them (1). Yet even his own teacher, Abu al-Hasan al-Ashʿari, reported the consensus of the prophets, their followers, and the early generations of this ummah that the method Abu al-Maʿali proclaimed to be the essence of faith is in fact forbidden. By resorting to that method—and to others like it—he sought to refute these hadiths. I have cited the words of al-Ashʿari and others on this matter in my book Exposing the Sophistry of the Jahmiyyah in Laying the Foundations of Their kalām-based Innovations (2).
When al-Razi invoked the concept of motion to demonstrate that whatever is subject to it must be originated, employing this argument to substantiate their claim that God is not spatially confined, his understanding of their actual state was as deficient as his grasp of their doctrine concerning the Qur’anic verses and prophetic hadiths on the divine attributes. He imagined that their position was merely to let the wording pass (3) while denying that the words meant what they clearly indicate
(1) Al-Juwaynī bases the newness (huduth) of the substances (jawāhir) on four principles: first, the affirmation of accidents (al-a‘rāḍ); second, the affirmation of their temporality; third, the impossibility of substances being stripped of their accidents; and fourth, the impossibility of accidents without a first cause. See al-Irshād by al-Juwaynī, pp. 17–27; and Lama‘ al-Adillah by al-Juwaynī, pp. 77–80.
(2) The text enclosed in brackets is an addition in the S and T manuscripts. See Bayān Talbīs al-Jahmiyya by Ibn Taymiyya, 1:621–622. In Dur‘ Ta‘āruḍ al-‘Aql wa al-Naql 2:13, the Shaykh (may God have mercy on him) notes that Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ash‘arī explicitly stated that acceptance of the Messenger (peace be upon him) is not contingent upon the proof of al-a‘rāḍ (accidents), and that using such proof to argue for the world’s creation is an innovation forbidden in the religion of the messengers.
(3) In the original it read “an immirār.” The passage is coherent without “an,” as in the S and T manuscripts. See the same doctrine in al-Aqīda al-Nizāmiyya, p. 32, where he states: “The imams of the Salaf refrained from ta’wīl (allegorical interpretation), applied the apparent meanings to their contexts, and entrusted their meanings to the Lord Almighty; this is the opinion we accept and the understanding of the Salaf that we follow by reason.” The Salaf—may God have mercy on them—are free from this doctrine, and numerous reports to that effect have been transmitted.