and Fashioner. The soul and body, however, are like partners who cooperate with one another. How, then, can it be said that the relationship of Adam’s essence—which is his soul—to this body is like the relationship of the Creator to the world, when the two are so far from being alike? For the relationship in which one does not inhere in the other, yet influences it through governance and direction, is reversible in the human case. On their view, the body is not a locus in which the soul inheres, yet it too influences the soul, since each influences the other. What one senses and directly experiences through the body affects the soul, as Abū Hāmid mentions in several places; this is directly observable. Does the world, then, influence Allah as the body influences the soul?

The nineteenth point: The claim that the human being is neither a body nor corporeal is not self-evident knowledge, nor did the Messenger inform his community of it so that it would become known to them. Indeed, the claim that Allah is not a body is likewise not self-evident knowledge, nor did the Messenger inform his community of it. Thus, if by his statement, “He created Adam in His image,” he meant that each