into the nature of things, until they came to suppose that these general, unqualified, universal concepts exist as such in external reality. They supposed that if we say, “Allah, Mighty and Majestic, exists, lives, and knows, and the servant exists, lives, and knows,” this necessarily entails something existing in external reality that the Lord and the servant share, with that very same thing present in both the servant and the Lord—indeed, in every existing thing. The Lord must also have something distinguishing Him from creation, so He would consist of two parts:

The first belongs to every creature: the common element shared by Him and all other existing things.

The second is exclusive to Him: that which distinguishes Him from all other existing things. Yet whatever they identify as exclusive to Him entails the same difficulty.

Thus, when they say, “He is distinguished by His essence, His reality, His quiddity,” or something similar, this amounts to saying that He is distinguished by His existence. For “essence,” “reality,” and “quiddity” can be used both without qualification and with a determinate reference, exactly like the term “existence.”

This issue has bewildered groups of leading speculative thinkers, to the point that some have said that “existence” and other such terms are used purely equivocally. They attributed this view to everyone who denies states—and these constitute the general body of those who affirm the divine attributes. Their account thus amounts to attributing the following position to the general body of Muslims and to speculative theologians who affirm the divine attributes—such as Ibn Kullāb, al-Ash'arī, Ibn Karrām, and others, and even to such exacting Mu'tazilī scholars as Abū al-Husayn al-Basrī and others: the term “existent,” and other terms applied both to Allah and to created beings, are used purely equivocally, without any general meaning shared by the two referents. This would be like the word mushtarī, used for both a purchaser and the planet Jupiter, or the name Suhayl, applied both to a star and to a man.