it is said that existence is divided into eternal existence and existence that has come into being, and into necessary and contingent existence. Likewise, istiwā is divided into the istiwā of the Creator and the istiwā of a created being. Likewise, will, mercy, and giving are divided into Allah’s will, love, and mercy, and the servant’s will, love, and mercy.
Whoever supposes that the “literal sense” encompasses only the servant’s created attributes, which have come into being, and not the Creator’s attributes, is profoundly ignorant. Allah’s attributes are more perfect and complete, and more deserving of these beautiful names. The servant’s attributes bear no comparison to the Lord’s attributes, just as the servant’s essence bears no comparison to His essence. How, then, could the servant truly deserve these beautiful names—deserving to be called knowing, powerful, hearing, and seeing—while the Lord deserves them only figuratively?
It is well known that every perfection possessed by a created being comes from the Lord, glorified and exalted is He, and to Him belongs the highest description. Whatever perfection a created being possesses, the Creator is more entitled to it; and whatever imperfection a created being is free from, the Creator is more entitled to be declared free from it. Thus Allah is “the supreme exemplar”: He cannot be compared to His creation, likened to them, or represented by examples. He and a created being cannot therefore be brought together in an analogical inference based on likeness, nor in a categorical inference whose members stand on an equal footing. Rather:
“To Him belongs the highest description in the heavens and the earth.”
Some people call these names “graded terms,” because the meaning is more fully realized in one subject than in the other. Existence is more properly attributed to the Necessary Existent than to a contingent being, and whiteness more properly to snow than to ivory. His names and attributes belong to this category, for Allah Most High is described by them in