The truth, however, is that this is impossible according to clear reason. It is known with certainty that knowledge is not identical with the knower. Whoever claims otherwise has carried sophistry to its furthest extreme and denied self-evident knowledge.

As for his assertion that the Mu'tazila have no proof that this must hold true of the First—namely, that the essence and the attributes are one and the same—that the speculative theologians have no proof negating corporeality, and that such a proof is possessed only by the learned, whom he identifies as the philosophers, the reply is as follows:

No one endowed with reason can doubt that the philosophers’ arguments for denying this are more unsound according to clear reason than those advanced by the speculative theologians.

You yourself have shown Ibn Sīnā’s approach to be invalid, yet in this matter you have relied solely on establishing that the soul is not a body, arguing that the Creator must therefore be likewise.

It is well known that if the proofs denying corporeality of the soul are sound, they apply all the more to denying it of the Lord. If they are not sound, your argument collapses.

It is also well known that the proofs denying corporeality of the soul are much weaker than those denying it of the Necessary Existent. How, then, can the weaker serve as proof for the stronger?!

The invalidity of their claims concerning the soul has been discussed elsewhere.

As for his claim that certainty concerning this negation is possible only for someone who has devoted himself to the art of demonstration—by which he means his philosophical method—and his statement that the discipline of speculative theology is dialectical rather than demonstrative: