But the “Jahmiyyah and the Mu‘tazilah” base their position on “their premise” that no attribute subsists in the Lord, because, they claim, this would entail corporeality and an inadmissible resemblance to creation: an attribute is an accident, and an accident can subsist only in a body.

The “Kullābiyyah” say that He possesses attributes over which He has no power and which are not subject to His will. Whatever occurs by His will, however, is temporally originated, and temporal events do not subsist in the Lord—exalted is He. They refer to “attributes connected to His will” as the question of “the inherence of temporal events.” For if He spoke to Moses son of ‘Imrān by His will and power, and called to him by His power and will when Moses came to Him, that call and speech would be temporally originated.

They say: If the Lord possessed such an attribute, temporal events would subsist in Him. They further say: If temporal events subsisted in Him, He would never be free of them, and whatever is never free of temporal events is itself temporally originated.

They also argue: If His being receptive to that attribute is inseparable from His Essence, He must have been receptive to it from eternity. It would therefore follow that its existence from eternity is possible. Yet temporal events cannot exist from eternity, since that would entail temporal events with no beginning, which is impossible for “reasons” explained elsewhere.

They say: By this argument we have demonstrated that bodies came into existence, and through it we have established that the world came into existence. By it we have also established the existence of the Preventer and the truthfulness of His messengers. Thus, challenging that argument would necessarily undermine the foundations of “faith” and “monotheism.” If, on the other hand, His being receptive to that attribute is not inseparable from His Essence, He would become receptive to it after not having been receptive, and thus He would be