the same about the claim made by some philosophers: “The celestial sphere is eternal and without beginning, yet He originated it by His power and will.”

The majority of people of sound reason say that any particular thing, whether an entity or an attribute, cannot be eternal without beginning if it comes about through the Lord’s will and power.

It was a principle of Ibn Kullāb and those who agreed with him—such as al-Hārith al-Muhāsibī, Abū al-‘Abbās al-Qalānisī, Abū al-Hasan al-Ash‘arī, the judges Abū Bakr ibn al-Tayyib, Abū Ya‘lā ibn al-Farrā’, Abū Ja‘far al-Sammānī, and Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī, and other prominent figures, such as Abū al-Ma‘ālī al-Juwaynī and those like him, as well as Abū al-Wafā’ ibn ‘Aqīl, Abū al-Hasan ibn al-Zāghūnī, and those like them—that nothing which comes about through the Lord’s will and power subsists in Him. They express this by saying that temporally originated events do not subsist in Him. In this they agreed with Jahm ibn Safwān and his followers among the Jahmiyyah and the Mu‘tazilah. Consequently, they adopted one of two positions concerning the Lord’s attributes mentioned in the Quran and Sunnah: either they regard them all as created things separate from Him.

Thus they say: “Allah’s speech is created and separate from Him; no speech subsists in Him.” Likewise, His pleasure, anger, joy, coming, arrival, descent, and everything else of this kind are created and separate from Him. In their view, the Lord is not characterized by anything subsisting in Him.

When they say that these things are attributes of action, they mean that they are separate and distinct from Allah and are attributed to Him—not that they are attributes subsisting in Him.