and the attributes are two eternal entities. Those who describe the attributes as eternal do not call them “entities,” since an “entity,” without qualification, is understood to mean a self-subsisting essence characterized by attributes. This is why a distinction is made between the essence and the attributes.

The word dhāt originally was the feminine form of dhū, meaning “possessor”—that is, the possessor of an attribute. In this sense, they do not call attributes “entities”; rather, they call them “meanings.”

When some of them, such as al-Qādī Abū Bakr, al-Qādī Abū Ya'lā, and others, say that a cause is an existing entity and can entail a predicate only for an existing entity, they mean that it is something existent. They explain this by saying that neither the cause nor the predicate it entails can be nonexistent, although those who deny states dispute this with them.

The point, however, is that by this expression they do not mean a self-subsisting essence, but rather one of the meanings. As for your report that they affirm an entity that necessitates His being knowing, without which He would not be knowing: first, this is not the position of their leading authorities or their majority, but only of those among them who affirm states. For their majority, knowledge is nothing other than His being knowing; they do not posit an entity that necessitates His being knowing.

You yourself have acknowledged that He has knowledge, power, and life, meaning that He is knowing and powerful