Eternal Divine Attributes: Knowledge, Power, Life and Speech

1. Eternal divine attributes: the central claim

وَلَهُ صِفَاتٌ أَزَلِيَّةٌ
And He possesses eternal attributes.

Eternal (azalī) means having no beginning preceded by nonexistence. Knowledge, power, and life are perfections that God does not acquire at a later moment. They cannot simply be measured by created human capacities, which arise and develop.

The question concerns the reality of attributes affirmed of the one God, not whether God Himself began to exist. Affirming several attributes does not establish several gods or several independently necessary beings; that inference would confuse attributes of one essence with separate essences.

2. Three lines of reasoning for attributes

لِمَا ثَبَتَ مِنْ أَنَّهُ تَعَالَى عَالِمٌ قَادِرٌ حَيٌّ
For it is established that God is knowing, powerful, and living.

Three approaches support the affirmation: 1. the meanings of 'knowing,' 'powerful,' and 'living' add intelligible content to the bare concept of necessary existence; 2. a genuinely derivative name signifies a basis from which it is derived; 3. revelation and well-ordered acts indicate divine knowledge and power.

These are distinct arguments: one concerns concepts, another predication and language, and the third revealed and observable evidence. Together they are intended to affirm real perfections rather than empty honorific titles.

3. Necessary being is not synonymous with knowing

كُلٌّ مِنْ ذٰلِكَ يَدُلُّ عَلَى مَعْنًى زَائِدٍ عَلَى مَفْهُومِ الْوَاجِبِ
Each predicate conveys meaning beyond the concept of the Necessary Existent.

Necessary existence tells us that a being does not depend on another for its existence. Knowing and powerful convey knowledge and power. One may understand what necessary existence means and still ask for a justification that its bearer has these particular perfections.

The phrase 'additional in meaning' does not mean an extra body, separable part, or independently existent deity. Conceptual distinction is not the same as physical composition or plurality of divine essences.

4. Why the predicates are not mere synonyms

If 'necessary,' 'knowing,' 'powerful,' and 'living' were fully synonymous, 'God knows' would add no intelligible claim beyond 'God necessarily exists.' But knowing and being able to act can be understood and discussed separately.

Example: Knowledge concerns what is known; power concerns what may be done. Knowing that an event is possible and having the power to bring it about describe distinct aspects, even when predicated of one subject.

The distinction is between meanings and attributes, not between multiple divine subjects. Nor does it automatically establish that God has spatially separable constituents.

5. Derivative names and their underlying quality

صِدْقُ الْمُشْتَقِّ عَلَى الشَّيْءِ يَقْتَضِي ثُبُوتَ مَأْخَذِ الِاشْتِقَاقِ لَهُ
A genuinely applicable derivative predicate implies the basis from which it is derived.

The word ʿālim is related to knowledge, qādir to power, and ḥayy to life. In their genuine predicative use these words are not arbitrary sounds: they affirm the relevant perfection of the subject.

This reasoning concerns true attribution, not every figurative nickname or conventional title. The divine names cannot be reduced to honorific labels devoid of the meanings they signify.

6. The difficulty with “knowing without knowledge”

لَا كَمَا يَزْعُمُ الْمُعْتَزِلَةُ أَنَّهُ عَالِمٌ لَا عِلْمَ لَهُ، وَقَادِرٌ لَا قُدْرَةَ لَهُ
This contrasts with the reported Muʿtazilī formula: He is knowing without an attribute of knowledge, and powerful without an attribute of power.

The objection turns on the relation of a genuine predicate to what makes it true. If the name 'knowing' is affirmed while every real sense of knowledge as an attribute is denied, the predicate needs further explanation.

The opposing school was not denying divine knowledge in the ordinary sense; it sought to avoid independently eternal realities alongside God. The disagreement concerns how meaningful perfections should be understood without compromising divine unity.

7. The analogy of blackness and its limit

فَإِنَّهُ مُحَالٌ ظَاهِرٌ، بِمَنْزِلَةِ قَوْلِنَا: أَسْوَدُ لَا سَوَادَ لَهُ
This is plainly incoherent, like calling something black while denying that it has blackness.

If 'black' is used genuinely and all blackness is then denied, the predicate is emptied of its content. The analogous objection asks how 'knowing' can be affirmed without any real knowledge.

Limit of the analogy: Blackness in a created object may be a contingent accident. Eternal divine knowledge is not therefore an accident, bodily color, or quality housed in an external subject. The example illustrates predication, not an identity of modes of existence.

8. Scriptural affirmation of knowledge and power

وَهُوَ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ
And He has knowledge of all things. (Qurʾān 2:29)

وَهُوَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ
And He has power over all things. (Qurʾān 5:120)

Knowledge and power are not affirmed by speculation alone. Revelation explicitly predicates them of God; a philosophical explanation must not turn these affirmations into meaningless names.

The universality of knowledge relates to everything knowable, while power concerns what is possible. A logical contradiction is not an object that could be brought into existence.

9. What well-ordered acts indicate

وَدَلَّ صُدُورُ الْأَفْعَالِ الْمُتْقَنَةِ عَلَى وُجُودِ عِلْمِهِ وَقُدْرَتِهِ
The occurrence of well-ordered actions indicates His knowledge and power.

Where order, proportion, and purposive coherence appear in an act, the question extends beyond an agent's bare existence to knowledge and ability. Knowledge concerns what is involved in the act; power concerns its possible production.

The analogy has a limit: a created artisan's mental processes do not disclose the mode of divine knowledge. Reasoning from an ordered act to the existence of an attribute is different from asserting that the attribute operates in a human fashion.

10. Life alongside knowledge and power

وَلَهُ حَيَاةٌ أَزَلِيَّةٌ
And He possesses eternal life.

Affirming life means more than permitting the title 'Living': it affirms a real, perfect, beginningless attribute. Created life is connected with bodies, nourishment, development, and vulnerability to death. None of those conditions defines divine life.

Knowledge, power, and life are intelligibly distinct perfections, yet their divine reality must not be imagined as copied human states. Divine life has no beginning, decay, or exposure to helplessness.

11. An eternal attribute is not a created accident

لَيْسَ بِعَرَضٍ وَلَا مُسْتَحِيلَ الْبَقَاءِ
It is not an accident, nor something incapable of subsisting.

In the classical theological vocabulary, an accident (ʿaraḍ) is a dependent property discussed in connection with created subjects and originating states. Treating divine life or knowledge as such a state would import a beginning, need for a contingent locus, or loss of the attribute.

The attributes subsist in the divine essence, not in an externally separate subject. Yet subsisting in the essence does not turn an attribute into a second independently existing divine essence.

12. What denying impermanence establishes

Created states may pass away: a learner can forget, a strong person can become weak, and one condition may give way to another.

Incapable of remaining (mustaḥīl al-baqāʾ) describes something whose persistence is impossible. Denying that description of divine attributes emphasizes their enduring, unoriginated perfection. The point is not merely that knowledge and power happen to be present now.

Two claims must be distinguished: affirming the attribute, and affirming its eternity and continuance. The first establishes a perfection; the second denies its origination and disappearance.

13. Eternal knowledge encompasses all that is known

وَلَهُ عِلْمٌ أَزَلِيٌّ شَامِلٌ
And He possesses eternal, all-encompassing knowledge.

Eternal excludes origination or gradual accumulation in God's knowledge; comprehensive excludes any knowable reality lying beyond it. Known events may be described as past, present, or future without implying that the divine attribute itself comes into being in successive stages.

Human knowledge is partial: a person may know one aspect of a subject while remaining ignorant of another. Such a division into knowledge and ignorance cannot be transferred to divine perfection. Divine knowledge is inherent, not acquired, and encompasses all objects of knowledge.

14. Why divine knowledge is neither compelled nor acquired

وَلَا ضَرُورِيٌّ وَلَا مُكْتَسَبٌ
And it is neither necessary in the created sense nor acquired.

For human beings, necessary knowledge is not achieved through deliberate reasoning; acquired knowledge results from learning, reflection, or other means of acquisition. Both are classifications of created states of cognition.

Divine knowledge fits neither class. God requires no teacher, sense organ, instrument, inferential effort, or involuntarily arising new cognition. Non-acquisition must not be read as absence of knowledge: the point is that divine knowledge is already perfect and eternal.

15. One principle applied across the attributes

وَكَذَا فِي سَائِرِ الصِّفَاتِ
The same applies to the remaining attributes.

The principle used for eternal, non-originated, non-acquired knowledge and life extends, where appropriate, to power and the other perfections. Their meanings and objects of relation differ, while their unoriginated status and relation to the one divine essence remain consistent.

Example: Knowledge relates to objects of knowledge; power relates to possible acts. Their difference in meaning neither makes them identical nor creates two separate necessary beings.

16. The actual issue disputed by the schools

وَلَيْسَ النِّزَاعُ فِي الْعِلْمِ وَالْقُدْرَةِ الَّتِي هِيَ مِنْ جُمْلَةِ الْكَيْفِيَّاتِ وَالْمَلَكَاتِ
The dispute is not about knowledge and capacity understood as created qualities or acquired faculties.

In human beings, knowledge may be analyzed as a mental quality and ability as an acquired disposition. Such contingent forms cannot simply be transferred to God, whose attributes are affirmed as eternal and free of bodily conditions.

The theological disagreement asks how to understand the real truth of divine predicates: as eternal attributes of the divine essence or in terms of the essence and its rational relations without the same ontological distinction.

17. Understanding the opposing interpretations

وَزَعَمُوا أَنَّ صِفَاتِهِ عَيْنُ ذَاتِهِ
They held that His attributes are identical with His essence.

In the reported interpretation, predicates such as knowing and powerful are used, but the reality of distinct eternal attributes subsisting in the essence is not accepted in the same way. Some explanations make the predicates depend on relations or conceptual considerations of the essence.

The motivating concern is a plurality of eternal realities. The Sunni reply is that acknowledging diverse attributes and meanings does not automatically amount to acknowledging several independently existing divine essences or gods.

18. A relation is not the whole reality of an attribute

يُسَمَّى بِاعْتِبَارِ التَّعَلُّقِ عَالِمًا
He is called knowing in consideration of a relation.

A relation (taʿalluq) connects an attribute with what it concerns, as knowledge relates to what is known. If the entire predicate 'knowing' were reduced to a relation between an essence and objects, a question would remain about the positive perfection signified by knowledge.

A changing object or relation must be distinguished from origination of the divine attribute itself. Explaining relations can be useful without making the eternal attribute disappear.

19. Plural attributes do not mean plural essences

فَلَا يَلْزَمُ تَكَثُّرٌ فِي الذَّاتِ، وَلَا تَعَدُّدٌ فِي الْقُدَمَاءِ وَالْوَاجِبَاتِ
This does not entail a multiplicity in the essence or several eternal and necessary beings.

Knowledge, power, and life are distinguishable in meaning but subsist in the one divine essence. If each were asserted to be a separate deity, plurality of necessary beings would follow. That, however, is not what affirming divine attributes claims.

The distinction between attribute and independently subsisting being is decisive. Denying multiple gods does not require denying meaningful perfections; affirming perfections does not multiply God's essence.

20. The objection of multiple eternal realities

The objection argues that if knowledge, power, and life are eternal, several eternal realities appear to exist, perhaps threatening divine unity. The hidden premise is that every eternal attribute must be an independently necessary being.

The response distinguishes an attribute's beginninglessness from the independent subsistence of an essence. An attribute may be eternal while remaining an attribute of the one God, not an additional self-subsisting deity.

Thus 'knowledge is eternal' does not imply that knowledge is a second god entitled to worship. The feared plurality follows only by reifying attributes into independently existent essences.

21. The Karrāmiyyah and originated attributes

لَا كَمَا يَزْعُمُ الْكَرَّامِيَّةُ مِنْ أَنَّ لَهُ صِفَاتٍ لَكِنَّهَا حَادِثَةٌ
This opposes the reported Karrāmī position that God has attributes, but they originate in time.

The view differs from outright denial of attributes: its dispute concerns their eternity. Some reasoning associates the appearance of new creatures or new objects of relation with the origination of attributes.

The response distinguishes the emergence of an event or object from the emergence in the divine essence of knowledge, power, or life that was previously absent. The latter is incompatible with the affirmed eternity and perfection of the attributes.

22. New objects do not require new attributes

An event occurs today, but it was not previously outside divine knowledge. Its external occurrence begins today; the divine attribute of knowledge does not begin today.

Likewise, a possible act being brought into existence concerns what power produces. It does not follow that God lacked power before acting and acquired it afterwards. Renewal of an object of relation must not be confused with renewal of the attribute.

This differs from human learning: a person who hears previously unknown news really undergoes a new state of knowing. Applying that created process uncritically to eternal divine knowledge produces a false inference.

23. The problem of originated states within the essence

لِاسْتِحَالَةِ قِيَامِ الْحَوَادِثِ بِذَاتِهِ
Because originated accidents cannot subsist in His essence.

If knowledge or life were first absent and later present, the divine essence would undergo a change from lacking a perfection to possessing it. Such acquisition suggests a prior deficiency or dependence, both rejected of the Necessary Existent.

The argument does not deny that new events occur in creation. It denies equating created occurrences with new intrinsic states arising in the eternal divine essence.

24. Divine speech and the question of its locus

لَا كَمَا يَزْعُمُ الْمُعْتَزِلَةُ مِنْ أَنَّهُ مُتَكَلِّمٌ بِكَلَامٍ هُوَ قَائِمٌ بِغَيْرِهِ
This contrasts with the reported Muʿtazilī view that God speaks through speech subsisting in something other than Himself.

When speech is affirmed as a divine attribute, the predicate Speaker must genuinely relate to God. If the very reality of speech is said to subsist only in a created external locus, it becomes necessary to explain in what sense speaking is a divine perfection.

Created sounds, written manuscripts, and audible recitation raise further questions to be distinguished separately. Here the immediate concern is the attribution and locus of the divine attribute of speech.

25. A comparison of the theological distinctions

Sunni affirmation: Knowledge, power, life, and other attributes are real and eternal, subsisting in God, neither created accidents nor separate gods.

Reported Muʿtazilī and philosophical objection: Real distinct eternal attributes seem to imply a plurality of eternal beings, prompting explanations in terms of identity with the essence or conceptual relations.

Reported Karrāmī view: Attributes are affirmed but some are held to originate; the answer distinguishes new objects of relation from new intrinsic states in God.

Speech: An objection arises when the predicate 'speaking' is explained solely by speech located in another subject. These disputes concern different propositions despite sharing the subject of divine attributes.