When they say,

“No temporally originated events subsist in Him,”

they lead people to suppose that they mean He is not subject to changes, transformations, and similar events that befall created beings, altering and corrupting them. This meaning is correct. What they intend, however, is that He has no voluntary act subsisting in His own Self, nor any speech or action subsisting in Him that is connected to His will and power; that He is unable to rise above, descend, approach, or come; and that, when He created the creatures, no act whatsoever proceeded from Him. Rather, the creatures themselves are the act: there is no distinction between an act and what is acted upon, or between creation and what is created. Instead, the created thing is itself the act of creation, and what is acted upon is itself the act—and other such notions.

Ibn Kullāb and his followers agreed with them on this, but differed from them in affirming the divine attributes. Ibn Kullāb, al-Hārith al-Muhāsibī, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Qalānisī, and others affirmed that the Creator is distinct from creation and that He Himself is above created things.

Ibn Kullāb and his followers held that being above created things is an attribute established by reason and known through reason. His rising over the Throne, however, is among the attributes established by revelation and transmitted reports, which can be known only through such reports. Likewise, al-Ashʿarī affirms the attributes sometimes on the basis of revelation and sometimes on the basis of reason. Thus, he affirms Allah’s being above creation and similar attributes denied by the Muʿtazilah. He also affirmed His rising over the Throne and refuted those who interpreted it as exercising dominion or other meanings that are not specific to the Throne. This differs from the followers of the author of al-Irshād (Guidance), who adopted the approach of the Muʿtazilah and affirmed the attributes only on the basis of reason. Al-Ashʿarī and the leading scholars among his followers used to