Likewise, the colours, tastes, and smells of bodies change. A body becomes black after being white, and sweet after being bitter, having previously been otherwise. These are motions, transformations, and transitions, even though no body moves from one spatial region to another. Similarly, a body rotating in one place, such as a wheel or a celestial sphere, does not, as a whole, leave its spatial region, although it never ceases moving.
All these motions occur in bodies. As for spirits, the soul passes from hatred to love, from displeasure to contentment, from aversion to desire, and from ignorance to knowledge. A person experiences the motions and transitions of his own soul, its ascent and descent. These belong to a different kind from the motions of his body. Once this is understood, the angels likewise have motions befitting them, while what is attributed to the Lord, Blessed and Exalted, is more perfect, higher, and more complete than all of this.
Thus, if the early generations and leading scholars—such as Hammād ibn Zayd, Ishāq ibn Rāhawayh, and other leading scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah—say that He descends while the Throne is not left without Him, it is not permissible to say that this is impossible. Rather, if one created being can be described in these respects in ways that are impossible for another—the soul being described in ways that cannot apply to the body—then this is all the more possible with regard to the Lord, Blessed and Exalted, than with regard to created beings, such as human souls and angels.
Whoever supposes that what is attributed to the Lord, Mighty and Majestic, can only be like what is attributed to human bodies is far more mistaken than someone who supposes that what is attributed to the soul is like what is attributed to bodies.