and His descent and His rising over the Throne are likewise objectively real; He is endowed with attributes of perfection such that the hearing, sight, speech, descent, and rising of created beings resemble His in no way whatsoever.

[Returning to the discussion of those who affirm some attributes while rejecting others]

This line of argument binds them both in matters established by reason and in their figurative readings of texts transmitted through revelation. Whenever someone, on the basis of reason, affirms one attribute yet denies another, he is inevitably confronted with the fact that the very difficulty he alleges for the attribute he negates applies equally to the one he affirms. When asked to distinguish between the two supposed problems, he can produce no meaningful difference.

For that reason, those who deny certain attributes while affirming others—resorting, in what they reject, either to consigning the meaning altogether to Allah or to a strained allegorical reading that violates the plain sense of the wording—possess no consistent rule. Should they be asked, “Why do you reinterpret this passage while accepting that one, when the same objection applies to both?” they have no sound reply. Such is their contradiction in negation.

Their inconsistency in affirmation is similar. When they force the scriptural texts into a meaning they accept, shifting the wording away from its evident sense to some other sense, the very objection that troubled them in the original meaning follows them into the meaning to which they have diverted it. Thus, if someone were to say, “Your allegorical explanation of His love …"