As for His speaking words without end, glorified and exalted is He, and His speaking by His will and power, this is what sound transmitted evidence and clear reason establish. It is the position of the early generations of the Muslim community and its leading scholars. The philosophers agree that this kind of activity continues perpetually, and their foremost early authorities agree that it subsists in Allah’s essence, as the leading Muslim scholars and early generations maintain. Those who declare this impossible are the adherents of speculative theology newly introduced into Islam—the Jahmiyyah and the Muʿtazilah. They argue that everything in which temporal occurrences subsist must itself have come into existence, on the grounds that a beginningless succession of occurrences is impossible.

This brings to light the second principle underlying the exalted Lord’s acts, whether pertaining to Himself or affecting others: do matters subject to His choice and connected with His power and will subsist in Him or not? The position of the early generations, the leading scholars of hadith, and many groups among the speculative theologians and philosophers is that this is possible. By contrast, those who deny the attributes among the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and the philosophers, together with the Kullābiyyah among those who affirm the attributes, maintain that such matters cannot subsist in Him.

As for the “deniers of the attributes,” they deny this and other attributes, saying: “All these are accidents. Accidents subsist only in a body, and bodies have come into existence. Thus, if attributes subsisted in Him, He too would have come into existence.”

As for the “Kullābiyyah,” they say: “We affirm that attributes subsist in Him, but we do not call them accidents, for an accident does not endure for two successive moments. In our view, the attributes of the Lord, blessed and exalted is He, endure, unlike the accidents subsisting in created beings; for we hold that accidents do not endure for two successive moments.”