existed, He would know it. Likewise, something that a person understands and knows to be intrinsically impossible, incapable of existing, is described as “inconceivable,” or one says, “This cannot be conceived,” although this expression is also used in the first sense. When a term has more than one meaning, people may misunderstand it and fail to recognize what is meant.

If it is understood that these disputants have said, “We apprehend, through necessary, innate reasoning—or know through necessary, innate knowledge—that it is impossible for two things to exist with neither being inside the other nor outside it. We know that whoever affirms an existent that is neither inside the world nor outside it has affirmed something whose existence cannot conceivably be known and which cannot exist. Indeed, this is tantamount to making it neither existent nor nonexistent, neither eternal nor originated, neither knowing nor unknowing, neither capable nor incapable,” and that an existing thing cannot lack both of these contradictories, then whoever affirms both or denies both has attributed to an existing thing a characteristic that makes its existence impossible, rather than merely nonexistent. He has thus affirmed the Necessary Existent while making His existence impossible. His words thus both affirm the Necessary Existent and combine His existence with His nonexistence.

This is the characteristic of these heretics among the Jahmiyyah and their followers: they are hypocrites, wavering between acknowledging the Creator, whose existence is necessary, and denying Him and declaring His existence impossible. They neither deny Him altogether nor acknowledge Him altogether.