nonexistent in eternity past, and its nonexistence would be an imperfection, so He would have been characterized by imperfection,” then he is like someone who says, “He cannot bring events into existence and does not do so, because if He could do so and did, His bringing the second event into existence would have been nonexistent before He brought it about. That is an imperfection, so He would be characterized by imperfection.”

The response is:

“You have described Him as perfect and above imperfection, out of concern not to describe Him with what you regard as a kind of imperfection. Yet one who never acts and cannot act is far more imperfect than one who can act and does act; and acts can only occur successively, one after another.”

This is the habitual approach of those who deny the attributes: whenever they deny an attribute to avoid an objectionable implication, their denial entails something even more objectionable. Such is the case with those who deny the attributes among the Bātiniyyah (esotericists), whether philosophers or others. When they were told, “If He is not described as possessing knowledge, power, and life, it follows that He must possess their opposites, such as inability, ignorance, and death,” they replied:

“That would follow only if He were capable of possessing those attributes. For when two opposites stand in the relation of negation and affirmation, such as existence and nonexistence, the absence of one entails the presence of the other.

“But when two opposites stand in the relation of privation and possession, such as life and death, or blindness and sight, a subject may possess neither. An inanimate object, for example, is described as possessing neither the one nor the other.”