Some of them have given another answer: namely, that we are pleased with the decree, but not with what has been decreed. Others have [given another answer]: that we are pleased with them insofar as they are created (1), but displeased with them insofar as they are acquired (2).
This amounts to the third answer. However, affirming acquisition when it does not make the servant an agent is open to objections that have been discussed elsewhere (3).
The position of those who regard the servant as an acquirer but not an agent—among the followers of Jahm [ibn Safwān] (4), Husayn al-Najjār, Abu al-Hasan [al-Asharī], and others (5)—is contradictory. Hence, they have been unable to offer any intelligible account of this acquisition or of the distinction between it and action. At times they say, “It (6) is that which is subject to created power,” while at other times they say, “That which subsists in the locus of power,” or “in the locus of created power” (7).
When they are asked, “What is created power?” they reply, “That which subsists in the locus of acquisition,” and similar formulations (8) which