their speculative theologians. Others held that He shares a location with the world and is everywhere. This is the position of many of their devotees and some of their speculative theologians. Each group can thus be countered with the position of the other.

If those who affirm that He shares a location with the world say, “I cannot conceive of an existent that is neither inside nor outside the world. Since He is not outside it, He must be inside it”—which is the substance of the argument advanced by a group of the unionist Jahmiyyah and others like them—they may be told: “If you cannot conceive of an existent except in these terms, this establishes that He must be either outside the world or inside it; it does not establish that He must be inside it. His not being outside the world was established only through this argument and others like it. If you challenge it as those who affirm the divine attributes do, the foundation of your position collapses, and you can no longer deny that He is outside the world.”

As for those who deny that He shares a location with the world, such as al-Rāzī and others like him, they have argued that He does not inhere in a substrate on the grounds al-Rāzī mentions in his Nihāyah. He says:

“The third question concerns the impossibility of His inhering in a substrate. We have three lines of argument for this. The first: If He inhered in a substrate, He would either inhere in more than one spatial region or in a spatial region