he remains perplexed: is there something more perfect than their position, given that someone who understands its true nature, and is well-intentioned and fair-minded, has evidently abandoned it for a contrary position? Or is there nothing more perfect than it? For this philosopher knows of nothing more perfect than it.

Likewise, the proponents of union and oneness count everyone whose learning, intellect, and excellence are recognized as one of their own, even if he openly condemns them. Similarly, those who are perplexed concerning the divine attributes conveyed in revelation portray the earliest generations and the imams as accepting the verses and hadiths concerning the attributes as they came, without knowing their meanings.

If they are among those who negate these attributes, they say:

“They inwardly believed in negating them, and did not know what the texts signified.”

Since this was the furthest they themselves had reached, and they regarded the earliest generations as the greatest of people, they made this the utmost attainment of the earliest generations.

These groups fell into error in two respects:

First, they did not know the truth as it actually is, whether through rational or revealed evidence.

Second, they did not know the true nature of the earliest generations’ statements, or the knowledge and clarity of explanation they possessed. Their understanding was thus deficient both concerning the truth itself and concerning the prophets’ and earliest generations’ knowledge of it. They supposed that what they had attained was the highest possible limit, and so made that