use it to establish any knowledge. In their ignorance, those speculative theologians sought to prove the prophets truthful and defend what they brought. Yet their deficient knowledge of revelation and rational matters meant that their efforts led to denying the messengers and impugning what they brought.

Affirming what the messengers conveyed, however, does not contradict this principle. Rather, it invalidates the arguments by which the heretics reject the messengers’ statements.

He then attributes this position to the hadith scholars, saying that it means that temporal occurrences inhere in Him. Yet you find many speculative theologians among the hadith scholars, such as Abū al-Hasan ibn al-Zāghūnī and Abū Bakr ibn Arabī, reporting a consensus that temporal occurrences cannot inhere in Him. I believe Abū Alī ibn Abī Mūsā also mentioned this. This is one of those claims of consensus made on the basis of the claimant’s own assumptions. These are broadly worded statements that may be understood to mean something unanimously regarded as false, while those who state them without qualification have subsumed under them many meanings understood only by a select few.

The first to put forward these formulations were the Jahmiyya, the Muʿtazila, and others like them. They began saying:

“He is free of accidents, parts, temporal occurrences, magnitude, a boundary, and the like.”

Under the denial of accidents, they include the denial of His attributes; under the denial of temporal occurrences, the denial of acts subsisting in Him; under the denial of magnitude, the denial of His being above His creation and distinct from them; and under the denial of parts, the denial of His being above His creation and distinct from them, as well as the denial of attributes known through revelation, such as the Face, the two Hands, and the like,