the early generations, which a number of imams have reported. Indeed, several of them explicitly declared that whoever adopted Jahm’s position on faith was a disbeliever. There are many comparable cases: someone advances a position that actually contradicts revelation and the consensus of the early generations, while believing that he is adhering to revelation and consensus. If this represents the limit of his knowledge and scholarly striving, Allah rewards him for the obedience embodied in that striving and forgives his failure to discern the underlying truth that lay beyond his ability to discover.

When they mistakenly supposed that the faith required of all people was a single kind, some of them came to think that this kind, considered in itself, admitted no differences in degree.

One of them once said to me:

“Faith, considered simply as faith, admits neither increase nor decrease.”

I replied:

“Your phrase ‘considered in itself’ is like saying that a human being considered simply as a human being, an animal considered simply as an animal, existence considered simply as existence, blackness considered simply as blackness, and the like, admit neither increase nor decrease nor attributes. You thus ascribe to the things designated by these terms an absolute existence, stripped of every qualification and attribute. Yet this has no reality outside the mind. It is merely something a person conceives in his mind, just as he conceives a being that is neither eternal nor originated, neither self-subsisting nor subsisting in another; or conceives a human being who is neither existent nor nonexistent, and says: ‘Essence as such is described neither by existence nor by nonexistence.’

“Essence as such is something the mind conceives, and it exists in the mind, not outside it. As for positing something that exists neither in the mind nor outside it, that is impossible. This conception itself can exist only in the mind, like all other conceptions of impossible things—for example, conceiving of the world as originating from multiple makers, and similar notions. These things are conceived in the mind.