Darʾ Taʿâroud al-ʿAql wa-n-Naql - Ibn Taimiya - (5/48)

If someone says, ‘They say that the Beginningless One who possesses the attribute and His beginningless attribute are two beginningless things,’ he is told: This is incorrect and must not be said. Likewise, when something has come into existence with all its attributes, I may not, in answering someone who asks about it separately and about its attributes individually, say, ‘It and its attribute are two things that have come into existence.’ For it and its attributes constitute one thing. The whole of it has come into existence, and its attributes, for their part, have also come into existence. Yet I may not say, ‘Both are things that have come into existence,’ because this contradicts the affirmation that what has come into existence is one thing, and misleadingly suggests that it is two rather than one.

The same applies when I say of the First, the One, the Beginningless, who possesses attributes, that He is beginningless and His attributes are beginningless. If I say, ‘He and His attributes are two beginningless things,’ this assertion negates His oneness and beginninglessness and entails that He is two rather than one. Thus, saying, ‘He and His attribute are two beginningless things,’ is invalid, just as it is invalid to say of something that has come into existence, ‘It and its attribute are two things that have come into existence.’

Rather, what must be said is that the beginningless, eternal One has always possessed attributes. If someone asks about an individual attribute, one may tell him: ‘It is beginningless, an attribute of the Beginningless One, who has always possessed it and to whom it has always belonged,’ just as an attribute of something that has come into existence must itself have come into existence. Whatever applies to the Beginningless One with respect to beginninglessness applies to Him with His attributes, not apart from His attributes.

Thus, when someone says that the One possessing the attributes is beginningless, he has thereby said that His attributes are beginningless, just as saying that something possessing attributes has come into existence entails that its attributes have come into existence.”

فإن قال قائل يقولون إن الموصوف قديم وصفته القديمة قديمان قيل له هذا خطأ لا يجوز أن يقال كما أنه لما لم يجز حين كان المحدث محدثا بجميع صفاته أن أجبت من سألني عنه منفرداً وعن صفاته مفردة أن أقول إنه وصفته محدثان لنه واحد هو وصفاته فهو كله محدث وهي على حالها محدثة ولا يجوز أن أقول هما جميعاً محدثان لأن في قولنا إنهما جميعاً محدثان فساداً لإثبات الواحد المحدث وإيهام أنه اثنان وليس بواحد فكذلك في قولي في الأول الواحد القديم الذي له صفات إنه قديم وصفاته قديمة فإذا قلت هو وصفاته قديمان ففيه إثبات تعطيل لتوحيده وقدمه وإيجاب أنه اثنان دون واحد ففسد من ذلك أن يقال هو وصفته قديمان كما فسد أن يقال للمحدث هو وصفته محدثان وكان الواجب أن يقال إن القديم الأزلي لم يزل موصوفاً فمن سأل عن صفة صفة مفردة جاز أن يقال له هي قديمة صفة لقديم لم يزل بها ولم تزل به كما لا تكون صفة المحدث إلا محدثة فما جرى على القديم في شرط القدم فهو واقع عليه بصفاته وليس بواقع عليه دون صفاته. فإذا قال القائل الموصوف قديم فقد قال إن صفاته قديمة كما إذا قال الموصوف محدث فقد أوجب أن صفاته محدثة.