befits His essence. The incompatibility involved in affirming His existence while maintaining that He is neither within the world nor outside it is far greater.

As for the second position, it concerns those who do not deny these matters, which have no basis in the Quran and Sunnah but are invoked against them by those who deny Allah’s elevation above the Throne. Rather, they may affirm them, or some of them, in wording or meaning, or refrain from either affirming or denying them. This is the position discussed by the early generations of the Muslim community and its leading scholars, the majority of hadith scholars, and groups among the speculative theologians, Sufis, and others.

Their discourse is sounder in both reason and religion, since they followed the Quran and Sunnah, acknowledged the innate disposition with which Allah created His servants without altering it, and made the Books Allah sent with His messengers the foundation of their discourse. As for the ambiguous, equivocal language used by those who deny these attributes, they clarified its ambiguities. They neither accepted ambiguous wording that might entail denying a true meaning nor agreed to deny meanings established by the Quran and reason—even if those who deny them vilify anyone who affirms them, or are adamant that this undermines their proofs and principles.

This argument may be addressed in several ways. First, consider his statement: “As for the third division, namely, that He is finite on all sides, this is false for two reasons. The first is that anything finite on all sides would have