For this reason, many of them say: “These are verses of attribution and hadiths of attribution,” and object to anyone calling them verses and hadiths concerning the attributes.
Or else they regard all these meanings as eternal and without beginning. They say: “His descent, coming, arrival, joy, anger, pleasure, and the like are eternal and without beginning,” just as they say that the Quran is eternal and without beginning. Some of them regard it as a single meaning, while others regard it as letters, or letters and sounds, eternal and without beginning, despite its being internally ordered. They say: “There is a distinction between the ordering of its existence and the ordering of its essence.” We have discussed these matters at length elsewhere, examining these views, those who hold them, and their scriptural and rational proofs.
The point here is that none of these views is the position of the Companions, those who followed them in righteousness, or the Muslim imams renowned for their leadership—the imams of the Sunnah and the community, and the scholars of hadith—such as al-Awzāʿī, Mālik ibn Anas, Hammād ibn Zayd, Hammād ibn Salamah, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak, al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ishāq ibn Rāhawayh, and others like them.
Rather, the statements of the early generations—the Companions, those who followed them in righteousness, and the imams of religion and Muslim scholars who followed their path—are preserved in books that transmit their exact words through well-known chains of transmission from them. These can be found in many books, such as The Sunnah and Refutation of the Jahmiyyah