and the Sufis, the scholars of hadith, and groups among the speculative theologians, including the Karrāmiyya and others—is that Allah’s being Creator, Provider, Giver of life, Bringer of death, Resurrector, Inheritor, and so forth belongs to His attributes of action and also to the attributes of His Essence. One who creates is not like one who does not create. The majority hold that creation is distinct from what is created: creation is Allah’s act, which subsists in Him, whereas what is created consists of the creatures separate from Him.

Groups among the “speculative theologians”—the Muʿtazila, the Ashʿarīs, and those who agree with them among Hanbalī, Shāfiʿī, Mālikī, and other jurists—hold that none of Allah’s acts constitutes an attribute of His Essence. Rather, creation is identical with what is created, or is merely a relation and attribution. This is the position chosen by Ibn ʿAqīl and the earlier of al-Qādī Abū Yaʿlā’s two positions. According to them, the Essence is in the same state whether it creates and provides or neither creates nor provides.

On this basis, the Muʿtazila challenged the consistency of their opponents among the Ashʿarī affirmers of the attributes and others like them. When those affirmers appealed to the previously mentioned “noble principle,” the Muʿtazila said: “Your principle is contradicted by the names Creator, Provider, and other names denoting actions. Creation and provision subsist in something other than Him, yet the names Creator and Provider are derived from them and applied to Him, even though no attribute of action subsists in Him at all. The same therefore applies to the Truthful, the Wise, the One who speaks, the Merciful, and the Loving.”

This objection does not hold against the great majority of the Muslim community and the general body of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah, for they apply the same principle throughout. Nor does this amount to asserting that His creatures or the things He brings into being are eternal, whether it is said that only His act itself, which subsists in Him, is eternal—as is maintained by many among these