This is what he said. One may respond as follows:

Regarding his statement:

“The proof that their claim is false is this: if He could receive them, He would never be free of them, as previously established concerning substances.”

The only proof he offered there was an analogy between the state before such a characterization occurs and the state afterward. This is not a rational proof that establishes knowledge. At most, it is an appeal to his opponent’s agreement on a major question of reason, on whose account the texts of the Book and the Sunnah are rejected. Far-reaching questions concerning the attributes and acts depend upon it, and people have fallen into great confusion over them. Who, then, would reduce the foundations of religion to a mere assertion made by a group of speculative theologians who agreed among themselves without either rational or revealed evidence?

His opponents have answered him with a two-pronged response: either distinguish the two cases—if that distinction is valid—or else dispute the claim concerning the original case.

Furthermore, he has stated, both there and here, that the Muʿtazila are the leading speculative theologians who promoted within Islam the denial of the attributes and acts, calling this the affirmation of His transcendence above accidents and temporally originated events. Abū al-Maʿālī has mentioned that they have no proof that it is impossible for Him to be characterized by temporally originated events, and that their position entails the opposite.

As for the first point, according to them, that which can receive something may be devoid both of it and of its contrary.

As for why this position follows necessarily from theirs, it is because they affirm newly arising characterizations of the Lord, and because, if it is not impossible for new characterizations of the essence to arise