because if He is on one side and the world on another, the distance between them is bounded.
This, then, is what they have stated.
[Ibn Taymiyyah’s Commentary]
The response is as follows:
You have reported that those opponents you mentioned claim to know self-evidently that your position is false and its opposite true, since you allow the existence of a being that cannot be physically pointed to as being here or there, and allow two beings to exist with neither permeating the other nor being spatially separate from it.
These opponents say: “We know self-evidently that this is false.” You therefore need to establish two points.
The first is to show that the falsity of this position is not self-evidently known. Otherwise, if its falsity is self-evidently known, no proof can establish its truth, because conclusions reached through reasoning cannot contradict self-evident truths. Rather, whatever contradicts them is sophistry.
The second is to establish that this is actually the case, for neither not knowing it to be impossible nor knowing it to be possible entails its actual existence in external reality.
If you establish these two points, it must then either be possible to affirm, alongside them, what the revealed texts entail—that Allah is above the Throne—or it must not. If it is possible, there is no conflict between the rational considerations you have mentioned and the divine texts. If it is not possible, a conflict between them is established. Thus, it has become clear that establishing such a conflict