in outward conduct are necessary consequences of inward faith, then they are entailed and required by it. It is evident that they grow stronger as it grows stronger, increase as it increases, and decrease as it decreases. For an effect increases only when that which necessitates and produces it increases, and decreases only when that decreases. Thus, if outward action is held to be entailed and required by inward faith, its increase must result from an increase in inward faith and therefore indicate that increase. Likewise, its decrease must result from a decrease in inward faith and therefore indicate that decrease. This is precisely the point to be established.

When the believer reflects rationally on all these matters, it becomes clear to him that the position of the early generations is the true position, from which there can be no departure. Whoever opposes them is committed to untenable consequences whose invalidity is evident from plain reason and sound transmitted evidence, just as with all other positions that contradict those of the early generations and the leading scholars. And Allah knows best.

The assertion of Jahm and those who agree with him—that faith is merely knowledge and assent, and that through this alone a person deserves reward and felicity—resembles the assertion of certain Peripatetic philosophers and their followers that human felicity consists merely in knowing existence as it truly is. Just as the positions of the Jahmiyyah and these philosophers closely resemble one another on “questions of the divine names and attributes” and “questions of compulsion and divine decree,” so too do their positions on “questions of faith.”

We have discussed this at length elsewhere and explained some of its flaws. For example, knowledge is only one of the soul’s two faculties. The soul has “two faculties”: the faculty of knowledge and assent, and the faculty of will and action, just as an animal has “two faculties”: the faculty of sensation and the faculty of voluntary movement.