He also mentioned four methods of establishing the existence of the Creator: the temporal origination of bodies, their contingency, the contingency of their attributes, and the temporal origination of their attributes.
He said that this method does not rule out His being a body, unlike the other three methods. They deny the attributes they deny only because they suppose that these attributes entail corporeality, which is ruled out by the reason that forms the foundation of revelation. If they acknowledge that one can know the Creator and the truthfulness of His Messenger before considering whether He is a body or not, it becomes clear that the Messenger’s truthfulness does not depend on knowing that He is not a body. Thus, even if reason were assumed to rule this out, such reasoning would not form part of the reason that underpins revelation.
[Third]
The third argument:
Those among them who claim that knowledge of revelation depends on a negation of this kind should be addressed. Some of them, for example, say:
“We cannot know that the Messenger is truthful until we know that the Creator exists, that He possesses power and is self-sufficient, and that He does nothing evil. We cannot know this until we know that He is not a body. Alternatively, we cannot establish the Creator’s existence until we know that the world came into existence, and we cannot know this except by establishing that bodies came into existence. We therefore cannot accept anything from revelation that entails His being a body.”
They should be told:
It is known with certainty from the Messenger’s religion and mass-transmitted reports that he called people to believe in Allah and His Messenger. He did not call people by this method through which you claim to have established that the world came into existence and that He is not a body. Those among the Emigrants and the Helpers who believed in the Messenger came to believe in him, and people entered Allah’s religion in multitudes. Yet he did not call any of them by this method; none of them mentioned it; it was not mentioned in the Quran or in the Messenger’s hadith; nor did any of the Companions call people by it