with it. Both the group to which the author of al-Ta’sīs belongs and this other group maintain that truths concerning God are established contrary to what people know, and are affirmed without specifying how. They claim this for matters they establish through reason, yet reason itself does not accept their claims. Rather, it rejects them through its self-evident principles and innate constitution, let alone through inference and reflection.

Second, the Lawgiver has not conveyed anything that reason knows to be false or judges impossible, such that it would be comparable to this. These people, however, have asserted what reason rejects and judges impossible. Thus, concerning what the Lawgiver has conveyed, one may say, “The manner is unknown,” or, “Without specifying how,” because reason does not deem it impossible. These Jahmīs, however, have asserted something rationally impossible, so their saying “Without specifying how” is not accepted. This is why Imam Ahmad said that he deceived the ignorant with this expression: he misled them because they failed to distinguish between what the Lawgiver conveyed and the statements of these misguided people, and between what reason accepts and what it rejects.

What Ahmad related from them—their statement that He is within it, neither separate from it nor in contact with it—and the statement of the others, among whom is the author of al-Ta’sīs, that He is neither within it nor outside it, are known by self-evident, innate understanding to exclude both contradictory alternatives.