The truth is that the essence characterized by attributes is never separable from those attributes, and an essence devoid of attributes cannot exist. To claim that there is a living, knowing, powerful, seeing being without life, knowledge, or power is like claiming that there are power, knowledge, and life whose possessor is not living, knowing, and powerful. Indeed, the existence of anything self-subsisting—whether beginningless or brought into existence—that is devoid of all attributes is impossible according to sound reason.

However, when the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and others affirmed an essence stripped of attributes, those debating them began to say:

“I affirm attributes in addition to the essence you have affirmed”; that is, “I do not confine myself to merely affirming an essence without attributes.”

By this, the speaker did not mean that, in external reality, there is an essence subsisting independently, nor that alongside it there are attributes additional to that essence and distinct from it.

Thus, some people say:

“The attributes are other than the essence.”

This is what the Muʿtazilah and the Karrāmiyyah say; the Muʿtazilah then deny the attributes, whereas the Karrāmiyyah affirm them.

Others say:

“The attribute is neither the subject described nor other than it.”

This is what certain groups who affirm the attributes say, including Abū al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī and others.

Still others say, as the imams said:

“We do not say that the attribute is the subject described, nor do we say that it is other than it; for neither do we say, ‘It is neither the subject itself nor other than it.’”

The word “other” is ambiguous. It may mean something separate from a thing, or something of which one accompanies the other, and something close to it in existence, time, or place. “Other” may also mean that one of two things can be known without the other being known.