Darʾ Taʿâroud al-ʿAql wa-n-Naql - Ibn Taimiya - (6/349)

This is because their principal argument is that these attributes entail corporeality, which is false. Yet their principal argument against corporeality rests on the impossibility of His possessing attributes—which they call composition—or on the temporal origination of bodies. The latter rests on the premise that whatever is never free of newly occurring events must itself have come into being, and on the premise that whatever possesses a distinguishing characteristic must have something that assigns it that characteristic. They make no distinction here between the beginningless, eternal Being whose existence is necessary in itself and anything else. Yet it is known that the necessarily existent Being must have a reality peculiar to Him, distinguishing Him from everything else. It is impossible for the distinctive characteristics of His reality to have something that assigns them to Him, just as it is impossible for His necessary existence to have a cause necessitating it, for His knowledge to have a teacher, or for His power to have an object subject to it, and so forth.

That being so, these people say to you:

“Occupying a spatial location and having a direction are due solely to the self-subsistence of that which possesses them. Thus, everything self-subsistent occupies a spatial location and has a direction by virtue of its particular essence. The invalidity of that has thus become clear.”

If you say, “It occupies this particular spatial location and has this particular direction only because of its particular essence,” they will not dispute that with you. Rather, they say:

“Spatial location and direction as such are due to self-subsistence as such. Thus, spatial determination in general necessarily accompanies self-subsistence in general, and everything self-subsistent occupies a spatial location and has a direction. It has therefore become clear that occupying a spatial location and having a direction necessarily follow from being a body in general, not from being one particular body.”

Then, if you say:

“Just as occupying a spatial location and having a direction necessarily follow from self-subsistence, they also entail being a body,”

they reply:

“That is indeed what we maintain.”

وذلك أن عمدتهم على أن هذه الصفات تستلزم التجسيم وهو باطل، وعمدتهم في نفي التجسيم على امتناع اتصافه بالصفات، ويمسونه التركيب، أو على حدوث الجسم الذي مبناه على أن ما لا يخلو عن الحوادث فهو حادث، وعلى أن ما اختص بشيء فلا بد له من مخصص، من غير فرق بين الواجب بذاته القديم الأزلي وبين غيره، مع العلم بأنه لا بد للموجود الواجب من حقيقة يختص بها يتميز بها عما سواه، وأن ما اختصت به حقيقته يمتنع أن يكون لها مخصص، كما يمتنع أن يكون لوجوده الواجب موجب، أو لعلمه معلم، أو لقدرته مقدور، ونحو ذلك. وإذا كان كذلك فهؤلاء يقولون لك: الاختصاص بالحيز والجهة إنما كان لكون المختص بها قائما بالنفس، فيكون كل قائم بنفسه مختصاً بالحيز والجهة لذاته المخصوصة، فقد ظهر بطلان ذلك. وإن قلت: إنما اختص بالجهة المخصوصة والحيز المخصوص لذاته المخصوصة، لم ينازعوك في ذاك، بل يقولون: الاختصاص بجنس الجهة والحيز كان لجنس القيام بالنفس، فجنس الاختصاص لازم لجنس القيام بالنفس، فكل قائم بنفسه مختص بحيز وجهة، فقد تبين أن كونه متحيزاً ذا جهة لازم لعموم كونه جسماً، لا لخصوص جسم معين. وحينئذ فإن قلت: كما أن الاختصاص بالجهة والحيز من لوازم القيام بالنفس، فهو مستلزم لكونه جسماً. قالوا لك: ونحن نقول بذلك.