It may then be said:

If what he has mentioned necessarily follows from their position, they must have erred either in affirming the position that entails it or in denying its necessary consequence. It has not been established which of the two is mistaken. Why, then, could their error not lie in denying the necessary consequences? If he adduces a rational proof of that, it would itself be a sufficient argument on the question. Otherwise, we learn only that the Karrāmiyya are mistaken in one of their two positions. If what he has mentioned does not necessarily follow from their position, it establishes neither their inconsistency nor any proof concerning the point in dispute.

It may then be said:

As for the first line of argument, it amounts to a verbal dispute: whether He is characterized by temporally originated events or not, much like other disputes of this kind. If their basic principles distinguish between what is inseparable and what is not, so that they call the inseparable an attribute but not the incidental, then these are matters of convention, wording, and language, not rational meanings. This resembles the usage of those who distinguish attributes from actions and do not call actions attributes, even though they subsist in a subject; or the usage of those who distinguish words from deeds and do not call what a person says a deed, even though it involves movement and the like. The guiding standard for applying terms—whether affirmatively or negatively—is what the Sharia teaches, for using a term may have harmful consequences even when its meaning is correct.

As for what he required them to accept in the observable realm, most people do accept it with regard to actions. In their usage, people distinguish between a person’s attributes and his actions, such as standing