Fifthly, it may be said: Every concrete entity is capable of receiving life, for Allah is able to create life and all that accompanies it in anything whatsoever.

Sixthly, grant that you refuse to label it dead, ignorant, or incapable. Still, you must say it is not living, not knowing, and not powerful. The mere negation of these attributes contains a deficiency equal to—indeed greater than—calling it dead, ignorant, and powerless. For this reason the imperfection of inert matter is greater than the imperfection of a blind person. Every objection that arises from privation of a faculty is present, and even amplified, in such total negation.

Seventhly, we say to these negators: you rejected these names in order to avoid anthropomorphism. Yet if you restrict yourselves to denying the affirmations, you liken Him to what is non-existent; and if you deny both affirmation and negation—saying, “He is neither existent nor non-existent”—you liken Him to what is impossible. Thus you fled from likening Him to the perfect Living One, only to liken Him first to a deficient living being, then to sheer nothingness, and finally to the impossible. You are like someone who escapes the scorching heat only to plunge into the fire. This consequence is unavoidable for anyone who denies anything of what Allah has affirmed for Himself: he evades one pitfall only to fall into another that is as bad or worse, while belying Allah’s own word and stripping Him of the attributes of perfection that rightly belong to Him.