the revealed law they seek to defend, and nullify the authority of its commands and prohibitions, and everything it came to accomplish in urging obedience and forbidding disobedience.

“If they say that all this proceeds from Him, does it do so by a will or without a will? To say that it occurs without a will is even more objectionable. If it occurs by a will, is that will eternal or newly originated? If it is eternal, then there is more than one eternal will. I do not think they would say that the many objects of will proceed from a single will.”

He said:

“If they say that this proceeds from Him through newly arising wills, they have affirmed what they initially sought to escape.”

[Ibn Taymiyyah’s Commentary]

I say: Since Abū al-Barakāt found it rationally implausible that many objects of will could proceed from a single will, he supposed that these people did not maintain this position. Yet they do maintain it, for this is the position of Ibn Kullāb, al-Ash‘arī, and those who agree with them among the scholars of theology, jurisprudence, hadith, and Sufism. They say that He knows all objects of knowledge through one and the same knowledge, and wills all objects of will through one and the same will; and that the speech He utters, encompassing every command and every report concerning anything, is likewise one and the same.

Those who uphold this principle then disagreed: does His speech consist solely of meaning, while the Quran