because they believed those conditions to be impossible with respect to Allah Most High. If, however, it is maintained that vision as ordinarily understood can encompass anything that subsists in its own right—even if it is stipulated that the object seen must lie in a direction relative to the viewer, occupy space, and subsist in something that occupies space—then the rational proofs for the possibility of such vision are such that rational people cannot dispute its possibility. Those who deny it do so only because they suppose that Allah Most High is not above the world and that, in their terminology, He is neither a body, nor something that occupies space, nor something that inheres in what occupies space, along with other negative attributes which they have invented despite their contradiction of authentic transmitted evidence and clear reason.

The point is that those disputing with the founder say to him: “We establish the possibility of seeing the Lord through the Book, the Sunnah, and consensus, and through clear rational proofs. We also establish, both through self-evident knowledge and through reasoning, that vision can encompass only what is, in their terminology, in a direction, and only what occupies space or inheres in something that occupies space. Once it is established that vision can encompass only what occupies space or inheres in something that occupies space, while what makes vision possible is existence and its perfection, it follows that nothing exists which neither occupies space nor inheres in something that occupies space. Indeed, it follows that the existence of such a thing is impossible. This retains this attribute with respect to the soul, the angels, and the Lord—glorified and exalted is He—as shown by the preceding arguments and by what they have mentioned as rationally self-evident.”