the opposite of something newly occurring must itself be newly occurring. Otherwise, the world’s nonexistence before it existed would itself be newly occurring. If its nonexistence were newly occurring, its existence would have preceded its nonexistence, which is impossible.’”

He said: “Even if we concede that the opposite of something newly occurring must be something positively existent, we do not concede that a subject cannot be devoid of both the attribute and its opposite in this sense. When we established, in discussing speech and perceptions, that a subject capable of possessing an attribute cannot be devoid of both it and its opposite, we meant ‘opposite’ in the broader sense, not the narrower sense. Thus, there is no contradiction.”

I say: This is an excellent, sound statement—if only he had followed through on its implications. For this method was among those used by the early generations and the leading scholars to establish attributes of perfection, such as speech, hearing, and sight. The attribute-affirming theologians among the followers of Abū Kullāb, Ibn Karrām, al-Ashʿarī, and others followed their example in this; indeed, they used it to establish attributes of perfection generally.

Yet he raised against this method the objections raised by those who deny the attributes, and claimed that these undermined it.