evidence of its existence. He rejected this position, since whatever lacks evidence establishing either its existence or its nonexistence may neither be denied nor affirmed. He explicitly stated that his reason for not affirming these scripturally reported attributes, such as the Face and the Hand, which al-Ashʿarī and others among his followers affirmed, was merely the absence of evidence establishing them, not the existence of evidence disproving them. He claimed that the scriptural proofs do not establish them and that they therefore may not be affirmed. As for the actual existence of attributes unknown to us, he does not deny this and considers those who deny it mistaken. These men maintain that His attributes exist in reality.

If one of them then says, “We do not know their modality,” or “We do not know their innermost nature and true reality,” this is no different from what he says concerning the divine Essence. Even if the least knowledgeable among them were to say, “We do not know their meaning,” his ignorance of that meaning would not preclude its existence in reality. How different not knowing something is from knowing that it does not exist!

Although this position, which he ascribes to the literalists among his followers, is held by Abū al-Maʿālī al-Juwaynī and others, and a consensus on it has been reported, and although Abū al-Wafāʾ ibn ʿAqīl and others like him also maintain it, the correct position is the one stated by Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Rāzī. This is the position held by the scholars of critical discernment, and it is one of Ibn ʿAqīl’s two views—indeed, his later view—as recorded in al-Kifāya