Shaykh al-Islām said:

This is “a momentous, comprehensive principle with many ramifications.” People are greatly confused about its details, to the point that some have adopted diametrically opposed positions regarding both kinds of judgments: cognitive judgments and theoretical judgments concerning concrete realities. For every instance of knowledge, belief, judgment, and speech—indeed, even love and intentions—either depends on its object and corresponds to it, or has an object that depends on it and corresponds to it. Accordingly, truth, realities, and words are divided into what exists and what is intended; what pertains to creation and what pertains to religion; what is decreed and what is prescribed, as I have explained elsewhere.

Theorists have disputed the nature of knowledge: does it depend on the object known without affecting it, being instead passive, as many speculative theologians maintain? Or does the object known depend on knowledge, with knowledge affecting it and thus being active, as many philosophers maintain?

The correct view is that knowledge is of two kinds: one dependent, the other that on which something else depends. These two characteristics generally—or always—coexist in knowledge. Thus, our knowledge of things that do not depend on our knowledge—such as our knowledge of the existence of the heavens and the earth, and likewise our knowledge of Allah, His names and attributes, His angels, His Books, His Messengers, the Last Day, the prophets, and other things: