events that demonstrate the power of the Lord Most High, even though the Lord is intrinsically worthy of the attributes of perfection. He is worthy of every perfection whose existence is possible and which entails no deficiency, and He is free of every deficiency. He, glory be to Him, has no equal in any respect. He is therefore described in detail by the attributes of perfection, without being likened or equated to others in them, and He is absolutely free of deficiencies. Indeed, attributing deficiencies to Him is among the greatest falsehoods. His perfection is inseparable from His holy essence; He does not acquire it from another. Rather, He bestows His favors upon His creation by bringing them into existence and endowing them with the attributes of living beings. The Creator of the attributes of perfection is all the more worthy of them, and He has no equal in them.

The root of people’s confusion over “the question of Allah’s speech” is that, when the Jahmiyyah and the Muʿtazilah debated the philosophers over “the question of the world’s having a beginning,” they believed that anything in which successive attributes and acts subsist must itself have come into being, on the premise that the infinite cannot exist. They consequently accepted that, in pre-eternity, the Lord was incapable of acting and speaking; indeed, that both were impossible for Him, and that He was inactive in both respects.

They sometimes express this by saying that, in pre-eternity, He had the power to act in the everlasting future, although acting in pre-eternity was impossible for Him. Thus, they combine two contradictories, ascribing power to Him while what that power concerns is intrinsically impossible. For an act necessarily entails having a beginning, whereas pre-eternity has no beginning; affirming and denying a beginning at the same time is to combine two contradictories.