they adhere to, while what is unintelligible to them is whatever contradicts their views. We found that your sects, O Jahmiyyah, disagree about what is rational: each sect among you claims that what it advocates is rational, and whatever contradicts it is unintelligible. When we saw that what was deemed rational differed among us, among you, and among all the adherents of deviant doctrines, and could find no clear definition of it applicable to everything, we judged the soundest and best-guided course to be to refer all rational judgments to the command of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and to the understanding widely shared among his Companions. Revelation descended in their midst, so they knew its interpretation better than we or you do. They were united upon the fundamentals of religion and did not divide over them; nor did innovations and desires that lead away from the path emerge among them. Thus, what is rational to us is whatever accords with their guidance, and what is unintelligible is whatever contradicts it. There is no way to know their guidance and their path except through these transmitted reports, yet you have cast them off and, by your own admission, disavowed them. How, then, can you be guided?”

I say: The early generations and the imams spoke extensively about seeing Allah, establishing its reality through revelation, its possibility through reason, and demonstrating that denying its possibility