Then his statement, “He knows those substances through those very substances themselves,” is astonishing. For, according to him, nothing exists except those substances. What, then, is the intellection by which He knows them? Is it an intellection that He possesses as an attribute? According to this thinker, He has no intellection subsisting in Him; rather, His intellection is His created things themselves.

The true import of his statement is therefore that He knows those substances which are both His intellection and its objects, while no intellection subsists in Him.

[The Twentieth Argument]

It may be said:

The true import of this man’s position is the position of the most extreme deniers of knowledge among his predecessors: that the Creator, exalted is He, knows nothing—neither Himself nor anything else. For knowledge is possible only if an attribute subsists in Him. Since they regard attributes subsisting in Him as impossible, His knowing Himself or anything else must likewise be impossible. This is the true import of what he has said.

As for the claim that created things themselves are knowledge, these are words devoid of substance. Someone who does not understand their meaning may imagine that they affirm Allah’s knowledge. Yet whoever understands them properly knows that they contain no affirmation of Allah’s knowledge. He thereby also knows that Ibn Sīnā, Ibn Rushd, Abū al-Barakāt, and similar philosophers are closer to sound transmitted evidence and clear reason than the heretical deniers who uttered such fabrications about Allah’s knowledge.

It is clear that what led them to this was their denial of attributes and of states arising by choice that subsist in Allah’s essence, together with their belief that these entail a multiplicity that must be denied and changes of state that must likewise be denied.