He went on to say, “Knowledge that a man is truly a Messenger, and that the One who sent him has validated his claim, is not contingent upon first establishing that the Creator speaks; only afterward is His transcendence above every deficiency learned through transmitted revelation.”

Others responded to him: “If your basis for negating imperfections is scripture, then affirm these very attributes by means of scripture from the outset. You need not make their affirmation depend on a prior premise—the negation of deficiencies—that itself can be proven only by scripture.”

By contrast, the leading scholars of the Attribute-affirming school (al-Ṣifātiyyah) hold that the affirmation of perfection and the denial of imperfection are matters known by reason. For that reason, the early imams among the Salaf, as well as the foremost theologians of the Ṣifātiyyah—such as al-Ashʿarī and his peers—established these attributes rationally; all of them maintain, on rational grounds, that the Lord is entitled to these attributes.

Among the criticisms leveled against those who negated the attributes by the method of denying corporeality is the charge that this very method spawned the Muslim controversy over the Qur’an and the Speech of God, to the point that many—indeed most—people became either bewildered or fell into erroneous innovation, with some declaring others unbelievers over it. Those who pursued this path rehearsed every conceivable point of disagreement, yet remained unaware that the question admits of any view other than the ones they themselves reported.

We find the authors of works on sects and creeds noting this, as in the books of