(1) Up to this point ends the quotation from Ibn Taymiyya, Bayan Talbis al-Jahmiyya, 2/551-552, and Darʾ Taʿarud al-ʿAql wa al-Naql, 3/177-178. He then states in Bayan al-Talbis: After explaining the meaning of maʿiyya (divine “with-ness”) on which the Jahmiyya relied when citing revelation, Imam Ahmad produced two rational proofs. He first reported their claim that God is “in everything without touching anything and without being separate from it.” This is the view of the Jahmiyya who deny His separateness yet, by implication, affirm His contact, asserting that He is in every place. A second group, such as al-Muʾassis, denies real separateness even while professing to affirm it “in reality and time”; yet the first group, though they negate separateness, also admit it “in reality and time.” Thus both factions announce that they affirm separateness while denying that God is outside the universe. Each faction counters the other precisely on the point where it sides with the mainstream. The first says, with the majority: “If He is not truly and temporally separate from the world, He must be joined to it,” opposing the second faction. Then it adds, agreeing with the second: “He is not separate from the world in reality and time,” which necessarily entails His conjunction with it. The second faction argues that if He is joined to the world He must be in contact with it, again in line with the majority and against the first group. It then affirms with the majority: “He is not in contact with the world,” which implies that He is neither inside it nor separate from it in reality and time, and therefore not outside it. He further comments in Darʾ al-Taʿarud: Imam Ahmad and the other leading scholars demonstrated the falsity of the Jahmiyya’s position, whether they said that God is in every place, or claimed He is neither inside nor outside the world, or asserted He is inside the world or outside it. All these formulations reduce to the single thesis that He is not distinct from the world or exclusively above it.