the soul’s inclination to obtain benefit or avert harm.” If you say, “That is the will of a created being,” you are told: “And this is the anger of a created being.” The same reasoning necessarily applies to His speech, hearing, sight, knowledge, and power. If what is denied of Him in anger, love, pleasure, and the like is that which is peculiar to created beings, then this is likewise excluded from hearing, sight, speech, and all the attributes. If he says, “These have no reality other than what is peculiar to created beings, so they must be denied of Him,” he is told: “The same would apply to hearing, sight, speech, knowledge, and power.”

Thus, the person who distinguishes between some attributes and others is answered concerning what he denies with the very argument he uses against his opponent concerning what he affirms. When a Muʿtazilī says, “He has neither will nor speech subsisting in Him, because these attributes subsist only in created beings,” this person explains to the Muʿtazilī that the Eternal possesses these attributes, yet they are not like the attributes of things brought into existence. Those who affirm the remaining attributes, such as love, pleasure, and the like, make the same argument to him.

If he says, “I have established those attributes through reason, because an act that comes into existence indicates power, specification indicates will, and precision indicates knowledge. These attributes necessarily imply life, and a living being cannot be without hearing, sight, and speech, or their opposites,”