It is well known that this contradicts the position of all groups, both those who affirm the attributes and those who deny them—even the philosophers who maintain that the world is eternal and deny bodily resurrection. For they acknowledge, as everyone else does, that the apparent meaning understood from these texts is the affirmation of the attributes.
But these philosophers say:
“The Messenger did not intend to impart knowledge or describe matters as they truly are. Rather, he intended only to present imaginative representations, even if this involved deception, outwardly expressing the opposite of what he inwardly believed, and lying for the sake of a beneficial purpose.”
This is the position of the heretical Bātiniyyah. The falsity of this is known on even more grounds than those by which the falsity of the position of the Jahmiyyah and Mu'tazilah is known. Hence, Muslims regarded these people as unbelieving heretics.
[The second ground]
It may be said:
The firmly established explanations of the Quran transmitted through numerous independent channels from the Companions and those who followed them in righteousness show that they understood these texts only as affirming the attributes. Indeed, the abundant reports transmitted through numerous independent channels from the Companions and their followers, outside the field of Quranic commentary, likewise accord with affirmation. Not a single word supporting the position of those who deny the attributes has been transmitted from any of the Companions or their followers.
Whoever carefully studies the books compiling the reports of the Companions and their followers—or, indeed, the works devoted to the Sunnah, including The Sunnah and the Refutation of the Jahmiyyah by al-Athram, and the works of Abd Allāh ibn Ahmad, Uthmān ibn Sa'īd al-Dārimī, Muhammad ibn Ismā'īl al-Bukhārī, Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Abd Allāh ibn Muhammad al-Ju'fī, al-Hakam ibn Ma'bad al-Khuzā'ī, Hushaysh ibn Asram al-Nasā'ī, Harb ibn Qāsim al-Kirmānī, Abū Bakr al-Khallāl, Muhammad ibn Ishāq ibn Khuzaymah, Abū al-Qāsim al-Tabarānī, Abū al-Shaykh al-Asbahānī, Abū Ahmad al-Assāl, and Abū