of utmost beauty for Him or to negate them. For those people say, “We do not say that He is living or not living.” Rather, they negate the opposites of these names, saying, “He is neither dead nor ignorant.” Although what they say entails His nonexistence, as explained earlier, this implication is not as evident there as it is in the statement: “He cannot be described by death or its absence, or by incapacity or its absence, just as He cannot be described by power or its absence, or by life or its absence”—meaning that none of these descriptions can apply to Him, whether negatively or affirmatively. For this is the condition of what is purely nonexistent.

That being so, someone who says, “I say that Allah is infinite in His essence, meaning that His essence does not admit of being described as finite or as not finite, because these are properties incidental to something possessing magnitude—just as He cannot be described as long or not long, short or not short, or as circular, triangular, square, or lacking these qualities, because these are properties incidental to magnitude, which amounts to corporeality and spatial location,” combines two contradictory claims. For saying “infinite in His essence” conveys a magnitude without limit—that is, extension without limit—just as saying that there is no limit to His past eternity conveys duration without limit