Thus, this great principle—the question of His creation and command, and the attributes and actions connected with it, including His love, pleasure, joy in what He loves, abhorrence, and patience with what offends Him—relates to questions of divine decree; the revealed law and the path being asked about; the divine attributes; and reward and punishment, promise and warning. These four principles are universal and comprehensive, and concern Him and His creation.

In their breadth, comprehensiveness, and ability to dispel doubts, they resemble the questions of attributes of essence and action; essence, reality, and limit; and the related questions concerning the attributes, the inherence of temporally originated events, and the denial of corporeality, with all the distinctions and careful analysis these entail.

For those who deny His attributes and those who deviate concerning His names and signs have rejected much of the truth brought by the messengers, on the basis of their beliefs concerning the negation of body and accident, the denial that temporally originated events can inhere in Him, and the denial of need. These things may rightly be denied in one respect, yet rightly affirmed in another. They thus fell into denying the indubitable truth brought by the messengers and revealed in the Scriptures—the truth with which created beings are innately endowed and to which both revelation and reason bear witness. And Allah knows best.