through life one emerges from death, and through light one emerges from the darkness of ignorance, becoming alive, knowledgeable, and capable of speech. This constitutes the perfection of a created being’s attributes. Something similar has also been said concerning the Creator; even the Christians interpreted the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the Existent, the Living, and the Knowing.

Al-Ghazālī reduced Allah’s attributes to being Living and Knowing. In meaning, this agrees with the philosophers’ statement: “Intellective, intelligible, and intellect.” For knowledge follows declarative speech and entails will and directive speech, since every living being has knowledge and therefore possesses will and speech; it also entails hearing and sight. This, however, is unsatisfactory, for it may be said that being Living itself entails all the attributes and is their foundation. This is why the greatest verse in the Quran is:

“Allah—there is no deity worthy of worship except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of all existence.”

This is also the Greatest Name, for every living being possesses awareness and will; thus, being Living entails all the attributes. If mutual entailment were sufficient when discussing the attributes, it would suffice to mention the Living. This is useful in questions of signification and existence, but it is not valid to make the meaning of being Knowing identical to that of having Will: that which entails something is not identical to what it entails. Otherwise, the Holy Essence itself entails all the attributes.

If it is asked, “Why, then, did he combine only what brings life and light in what we are to seek, rather than confining it to life or adding ability and other attributes?” the answer is: Among living human beings, some are guided to the truth and others are not. Guidance, then, is the perfection of life. As for ability, it is a prerequisite for