What these Jahmīs, Muʿtazilah, and those Ashʿarīs and others who agree with them really maintain is that the Lord had remained inactive from eternity, doing nothing and not speaking by His will and power. Then He brought substances into existence without any act subsisting in Him. Thereafter, He no longer created anything; rather, only attributes arise that inhere in those substances.

They claim that this is the position of the adherents of the revealed religions—the prophets and their followers. On such matters, they dispute with the philosophers, and both sides have erred. The philosophers affirm matter and form, treating them as two substances, whereas these people say that form is merely an accident inhering in a body.

The correct account is that the terms “matter” and “form” have several meanings: matter and form in artifacts and in nature, and universal and primary matter and form.

The first includes silver fashioned into a dirham, a ring, or an ingot; wood made into a chair; bricks and stone made into a house; yarn woven into cloth; and similar examples. There is no doubt that the matter here, which they call hayūlā (matter), consists of bodies that subsist in themselves, while the forms are accidents inhering in them. Thus, silver’s transformation from one form into another is a change from one shape to another, while its essential reality remains entirely unchanged.

This makes clear to you the error of the claim: “Whoever establishes that what comes into being requires an agent by analogy with entities coming into being makes the same claim here.” This approach