the existence of this Necessary Existent is more perfect than that of a contingent being does not prevent “existence” from signifying a universal meaning shared by both. The same applies to all other names and attributes predicated of the Creator and the created, such as “living,” “knowing,” “powerful,” “hearing,” and “seeing.” Likewise, this applies to His attributes, such as His knowledge, power, mercy, pleasure, anger, joy, and all the other names and attributes of His proclaimed by the messengers.

People have disagreed on this matter. One group—including Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Nāshiʾ, one of the Muʿtazilite masters who preceded Abū ʿAlī—held that these terms apply literally to the Creator and figuratively to the created. A group among the Jahmiyyah, Bātiniyyah, and philosophers held the reverse: they apply figuratively to the Creator and literally to the created.

The great majority across the various schools held that they apply literally to both. This is the position of groups of speculative thinkers among the Muʿtazilites, Ashʿaris, Karrāmiyyah, jurists, people of hadith, and Sufis. It is also the philosophers’ position. Many of these, however, contradict themselves: they acknowledge that some terms apply literally, such as “existent,” “self,” “essence,” “reality,” and the like, yet dispute this concerning others because of the specious arguments advanced by those who deny them all. Yet what applies to the terms someone denies is analogous to what applies to those he affirms. It is only his limited understanding that leads him to distinguish between equivalent cases. Denying them all rules out His existence.

It is known that what exists is divided into the necessary and the contingent, the eternal and the temporally originated, the self-sufficient and the dependent, the produced and the unproduced. The existence of the contingent entails the existence of the necessary; the existence of what is brought into being entails the existence of the eternal; the existence of the dependent entails the existence of the self-sufficient; and the existence of the produced entails the existence of