One is called “blind,” “deaf,” or “mute” only when a quality that he is naturally capable of possessing has been taken away from him. An inanimate object, by contrast, is never described as blind, deaf, or mute, because it is not receptive to those qualities. Likewise, denying life, knowledge, power, and speech of the Necessary Existent does not of itself entail ascribing to Him their opposites—death, ignorance, incapacity, and muteness—unless He were capable of receiving those opposites, and that capacity is either impossible or unverified. This specious argument has led astray many sharp-minded later scholars, al-Āmidī among them; yet it is false for several reasons.

First: The Necessary Existent is either receptive to the attributes of perfection—life, knowledge, power, and the like—or He is not. If He is not receptive, such unreceptiveness is a greater deficiency than being receptive yet not actually possessing them, for a lifeless stone is more deficient than a blind animal. Now, if it is impossible to describe Him as blind, deaf, or mute, while the being that can bear those infirmities is still more perfect than one that cannot receive either the infirmities or their opposites, it follows that being unreceptive to those attributes marks an even graver imperfection. Since attributing that imperfection to Him is impossible, it is even more impossible to claim that He is not receptive to the attributes of perfection. Conversely, if He is receptive to them in the privation-and-possession sense they allege, then denying Him life, knowledge, and power necessarily entails affirming death, incapacity, and ignorance for Him—an absurdity that reason immediately rejects. Therefore the contrary—that He is Living, All-Knowing, and All-Powerful—is necessarily true.

Second: every perfection affirmed of a creature is even more rightly affirmed of the Creator, and every defect from which a creature is declared free is with greater reason negated of the Creator.