and His bringing those guilty of major sins out of the Fire through intercession and other means, and His declaration that whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it.

You yourselves affirm something beginningless that is not called Allah, for you affirm an essence devoid of attributes. Yet it is known that whatever possesses neither life, knowledge, nor power is not Allah. Whoever affirms an essence devoid of attributes has therefore affirmed something beginningless that is not Allah. If someone says, “I say that He has always possessed life, knowledge, and power,” this is precisely the position of those who affirm the attributes. His having life is not the same as His having knowledge, and His having knowledge is not the same as His having power. Nor is any of this the same as His being an essence characterized by these attributes. These are meanings distinguished by the intellect; one is not identical to another.

If you say that they are beginningless, you have affirmed beginningless meanings. If you say that they are all one thing, you have made each attribute identical to the others, and the attribute identical to the One it describes. You have thus made His having life identical to His having knowledge, and made that identical to the essence itself. Clearly, this is a denial of the obvious. These meanings are the meanings of His Most Beautiful Names, and He—glorified be He—has always spoken whenever He willed.

He is therefore the One who named Himself with His Most Beautiful Names. As al-Bukhārī relates in his Sahīh, Ibn ʿAbbās was asked about His words:

“And Allah has always been Almighty, All-Wise,”

“Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

He replied: “He named Himself thus, and He has always been so.” He thereby affirmed that the meanings of His Most Beautiful Names are beginningless and that He Himself is the One who named Himself with them.

If, then, you say that His names or His speech are other than Him, the expression “other” is ambiguous. If you mean that they are something separate from Him, that is false. If you mean that one can be aware of one without the other, then indeed