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Part One · Chapter Sixty — A Parable of Negations: The Ship
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I wish to set before you in this chapter some analogies through which you will gain a clearer conception of the necessity of multiplying His attributes through negations, and through which you will gain a stronger aversion to believing positive attributes of Him, exalted be He. Suppose that a person has established that a ship exists, but does not know what this name applies to — whether to some substance or to an accident. Then it becomes clear to a second person that it is not an accident; then clear to another that it is not a mineral; then clear to another that it is not an animal; then clear to another that it is not a plant rooted in the earth; then clear to another that it is not a single body joined in a natural joining; then clear to another that it is not a simple flat shape like planks and doors; then clear to another that it is not a sphere; clear to another that it is not a cone; clear to another that it is not circular nor of straight sides; clear to another that it is not solid. Now it is evident that this last person has almost reached the conception of what a ship actually is through these negative attributes — and he is nearly equivalent to one who conceived it as a hollow oblong wooden body composed of multiple timbers, which is the one who conceived it through positive attributes. As for those who came before, whom we used as illustrations, each one of them is further from conceiving the ship than the one after him — so much so that the first person in our illustration knows nothing more than the name alone.
So do negative attributes bring you near to knowledge and apprehension of God, exalted be He. Therefore strive with all your effort to increase the negation of a thing by proof — not to negate by mere verbal utterance; for whenever it becomes clear to you by proof that something supposedly belonging to Him, exalted be He, is negated from Him, you have without doubt drawn one degree closer to Him.
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By this means some people have come to be very near to Him, while others are at the extreme of distance — not that there is a spatial nearness such that one draws near to Him or goes far from Him, as the blind in insight suppose. Understand this thoroughly, know it well, and hold it firmly; for the path has been made clear to you: if you traverse it, you will come near to Him, exalted be He. Traverse it if you wish.
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As for describing Him, exalted be He, through positive attributes — in it there is a great danger. For it has been demonstrated that anything we might suppose to be a perfection — even if that perfection were to exist in Him, according to the view of those who hold attributes — it is not of the genus of the perfection we suppose; it is said only by pure homonymy, as we explained. So you are necessarily brought to the meaning of negation; for if you say 'knowing through a single knowledge — through that knowledge which is unchanging and unplurified, knowing the many ever-renewed changing matters without any renewal of knowledge for Him, His knowledge of a thing before its coming to be, after its having come into existence, and after it departs from existence being a single knowledge with no change in it' — you have in fact stated explicitly that He is knowing through a knowledge not like our knowledge. And likewise it follows necessarily that He is existent, not in the sense of existence as we have it. So you have produced negations necessarily, and have not achieved the verification of any essential attribute; yet you have produced multiplication — believing Him to be a certain essence with unknown attributes, since what you claim to affirm of Him you deny to be similar to these attributes known to us. So they are not of their genus. Thus the matter has turned out from your affirming attributes such that you say: God, exalted be He, is a certain subject bearing certain predicates, though that subject is not like these predicates. The ultimate result of our apprehension with this belief is nothing but association — for every subject necessarily has predicates, and it is two in definition even if one in existence, since the meaning of the subject is other than the meaning of what is predicated of it. And the proof of the impossibility of composition in Him, exalted be He — rather, of pure simplicity in the furthest extreme — will become clear to you in the chapters of this treatise.
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I do not say that one who affirms attributes of God, exalted be He, is deficient in apprehending Him, or associates something with Him, or has apprehended Him contrary to what He is; rather I say: he has negated the existence of God from his belief without being aware of it. This is because: the one who is deficient in apprehending the truth of something is the one who apprehends part of it and is ignorant of another part — as one who apprehends from the meaning of 'human being' the necessities of animality but does not apprehend the necessities of rational speech. But God, exalted be He, has no multiplicity in the truth of His existence such that one might understand something of it and be ignorant of something else. And the one who associates something with something is the one who has conceived the true nature of some essence as it really is and then affirms the same nature for another essence — but these attributes, in the view of those who hold them, are not the essence of God; they are meanings additional to the essence. And likewise the one who apprehends a thing contrary to what it is must necessarily apprehend something of it as it is. But as for one who conceives that taste is a quantity — I do not say that he has conceived the thing contrary to what it is; rather I say that he is ignorant of the existence of taste and does not know what this name applies to. This is a very subtle point — understand it.
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From this explanation you will understand that the one who is deficient in apprehending God and farthest from knowledge of Him is the one to whom the negation of a certain meaning has not become clear — a meaning that has been demonstrated to others to be negated from Him. The fewer his negations, the more deficient in apprehension, as we explained at the beginning of this chapter. As for the one who affirms a positive attribute — he knows nothing more than the name alone. The thing he imagines this name to fall on is a meaning that does not exist — rather it is a fabricated falsehood. So he has in effect placed this name on a non-existent meaning, since there is in existence nothing of this kind. For example: if a person heard the name 'elephant' and knew that it was an animal, and sought to know its form and its truth, and the erring or misleading person said to him: 'It is an animal with a single leg and three wings, dwelling in the depths of the sea, its body transparent, with a broad face like the face of a human being in shape and form, speaking like a human, and sometimes flying in the air and sometimes swimming like a fish' — I would not say that this is a conception of the elephant contrary to what it is, nor that he is deficient in apprehending the elephant; rather I would say that the thing he imagined with these attributes is a fabricated falsehood, and there is nothing in existence of this kind. Rather this is a non-existent thing onto which the name of an existing thing has been placed — like the roc (ʿanqāʾ mughrib) and the human horse (faras insān) and the like of such imaginary forms to which the name of some existing thing has been attached, whether a simple name or a compound name. So too the matter here: for God, glorified be His praise, is an existent whose existence has been demonstrated to be necessary, and what follows necessarily from necessary existence is pure simplicity, as we shall prove. But that that simple necessarily existent essence is — as they say — an essence having attributes and additional meanings attaching to it: this is something that does not exist in any way, as has been demonstrated. So when we say 'this essence, called God for example, is an essence having multiple meanings as attributes' — we have fastened that name onto pure non-existence. Reflect on how dangerous it is to affirm positive attributes of Him.
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What ought to be believed about all the attributes that come in the book of Revelation or in the books of the prophets is that they are all for guiding toward His perfection, exalted be He — nothing more — or they are attributes of actions proceeding from Him, as we have explained.