Hence some innovators coined the name “monotheists” for those who followed them in denying the attributes. Their ultimate position is to say that He is absolute existence, conditioned by absoluteness, as one group of them maintained; or conditioned by the negation of affirmative realities, as Ibn Sīnā and his followers maintained. Alternatively, they say that He is absolute existence without qualification, as al-Qūnawī and others like him maintain.

Clear reason, which has never deceived, shows that these statements are false and contradictory in several respects:

[Refutation of those who deny the attributes on several grounds. The first]
Refutation of those who deny the attributes on several grounds.
The first

One of these grounds is that identifying knowledge itself with power itself, power itself with governance and care, life itself with knowledge and power themselves, and knowledge itself with action and creation—and other such identifications—is self-evidently false. For these are distinct realities n; if one such reality is identified with another, this is like saying, “The reality of blackness is the reality of taste, which is the reality of colour,” and making similar statements that reduce distinct realities to a single reality.

[The second]
The second ground:

It is known that what subsists in itself is not what subsists in another; a body is not an accident; the bearer of an attribute is not the attribute; and the essence is not its attributes. Thus, anyone who says that the knower is knowledge and knowledge is the knower is plainly in error.

Likewise, it is known that knowledge is not the object of knowledge. Thus, anyone who says that knowledge is the object of knowledge and the object of knowledge is knowledge is also plainly in error.

When the word “intellect” is intended as a verbal noun, that verbal noun is neither the “thinker,” which is an active participle, nor the “object of thought,” which is a passive participle. And when “intellect” means a substance