[The second point]
It may be said:
His speaking and doing whatever He wills is an attribute of perfection, and He has always possessed this attribute. As for a particular thing, its coming into existence is neither a deficiency nor a perfection.
[The third point]
It may be said:
What do you mean by saying that its absence is a deficiency? Do you mean that His essence is deficient and lacks the attributes of perfection that necessarily belong to it? Or do you mean the absence of what it will later possess? The first is false. As for the second, why do you say that this is impossible?
[The fourth point]
It may be said: You have maintained what Abū al-Maʿālī, al-Rāzī, and others stated: that His freedom from imperfections is known only through transmitted evidence, not through reason. If you say that nothing in reason rules this out, then only transmitted evidence remains—which, in your view, is consensus.
Yet it is known that transmitted evidence, which is consensus, and consensus and other evidence have not ruled out these matters. Rather, only what contradicts the attributes of perfection has been ruled out: death, which is incompatible with life; drowsiness and sleep, which are incompatible with His self-subsistence and sustenance of all things; and weariness, which is incompatible with perfect power.
Hence the correct view is that Allah is free of imperfections according to both revelation and reason.
For