LessonsDivine Names and Attributes: Affirmation, Transcendence and NamingQuiz

الحي القادر العليم السميع البصير الشائي المريد
The Living, Powerful, Knowing, Hearing, Seeing, Willing and Desiring.

This is more than a list of titles. Life is a perfection appropriate to the possessor of knowledge and power; knowledge concerns what is known; power concerns possible acts; and will specifies an outcome. Hearing and sight concern their respective objects of awareness.

The attributes should not be compressed into one indistinct expression. Having the power to bring about an event differs conceptually from willing that event at one particular time and in one particular manner. Such distinctions matter in later theological reasoning.

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The foundational list of perfections

Divine Names and Attributes: Affirmation, Transcendence and Naming

الحي القادر العليم السميع البصير الشائي المريد
The Living, Powerful, Knowing, Hearing, Seeing, Willing and Desiring.

This is more than a list of titles. Life is a perfection appropriate to the possessor of knowledge and power; knowledge concerns what is known; power concerns possible acts; and will specifies an outcome. Hearing and sight concern their respective objects of awareness.

The attributes should not be compressed into one indistinct expression. Having the power to bring about an event differs conceptually from willing that event at one particular time and in one particular manner. Such distinctions matter in later theological reasoning.