in a body—then why do you maintain(1) that their mistake lies in the second claim rather than the first?

If you reply, “because(2) conclusive proof has established that He is not a body,” it will be said to you: that very same argument also negates the possibility that attributes—which are accidents—subsist in Him, for accidents can inhere only in a body.

It will further be said to you: The proof by which you denied bodiliness is none other than your inference that a body must be originated because its accidents are originated. The final step of that argument, once every premise is in place, is to forbid an infinite regress of events without a first. If that premise were sound, you would be forced to concede events that occur without any cause, and this would demolish the very foundation of your proof for the existence of the Maker. For whenever origination is allowed without a complete determining cause that corresponds to that origination, one of the two equally possible sides is preferred over the other with no determinant; that shuts the door to establishing the Maker and even entails that no necessary being exists at all. In itself, this is among the most corrupt ideas ever voiced—hence no rational person has ever affirmed it.

Shaykh al-Islam Abū Ismāʿīl ʿAbd-Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Anṣārī said in his book Dhamm al-Kalām(3), in the chapter(4) where he cites the words of al-Ashʿarī(5): “When the eminent scholars of the Ummah and the perceptive among Ahl al-Sunnah examined the inner folds(6) of the Jahmiyya’s discourse and the cryptic symbols(7) they had taken from the philosophers, we found in them(8) nothing but sheer negation; indeed, the axis of their doctrine and the ultimate upshot of their creed(9) amounts to nothing other than what is explicitly stated…"