over these technical expressions:

Some said: Knowledge, power, and the like can only be accidents and attributes, wherever they exist. Thus, Allah’s knowledge and power are accidents.

They also said: A hand and a face can only be bodies, so Allah’s hand and face are likewise bodies. Whoever possesses these attributes can only be a body; thus Allah Most High is a body unlike other bodies.

They said: This cannot be disputed once the intended meaning is understood. But what is objectionable about it? Neither Allah’s Book, nor His Messenger’s Sunnah, nor any statement of the early generations and imams of this community says that He is not a body or that His attributes are not bodies and accidents. To deny meanings established by revelation and reason by negating terms whose meanings neither revelation nor reason has negated is ignorance and misguidance.

They said: Likewise, reason rules this out on the basis of the evidence that a body and the accidents inhering in it have a temporal beginning.

They said: For reason has not established that every self-subsisting bearer of attributes—which is what a body is—and every attribute inhering in it—which is what an accident is—has a temporal beginning. The argument advanced for this is unsound. It is the foundation of “speculative theology,” which the early generations and the imams unanimously condemned and declared invalid. This argument will be discussed in its proper place.

They said: There is therefore no sense in rejecting a truth established by revelation and reason merely because it entails the invalidity of an innovated argument rejected by the early generations and the imams, simply because some proponents of that argument claim it to be the foundation of religion, without which religion cannot be known. It is only the foundation of the religion they themselves invented, as Allah Most High says:

“Or do they have partners