The attributes established by revelation

The Attributes Known by Revelation (al-ṣifāt al-samʻiyyah)

As for hearing, sight and speech (1): they are established by the Book, the Sunnah and consensus, so that we are obliged to believe in them, while holding the essence of the Real free of bodily organ and of contact. He is the Hearing, the Seeing, by two attributes subsisting in His essence, Most High — not by an eye, nor by an ear, nor by anything resembling them. And He is the Speaking, by a speech pre-eternal and everlasting, subsisting in His essence, free of letters and sounds, of organs and instruments. And the Qurʼān is the speech of God, uncreated — contrary to the Muʻtazilah in their denying the attribute of speech of Him, Most High, and in their claim that the ascription of speech to Him is only because He creates it in that from which the speech issues. And beyond this, He, glory be to Him, is qualified by every perfection befitting His essence, and our intellects are not able to encompass what He knows of His own essence of the kinds of perfections. And of these beliefs, what is established by the intellect — the believing of it is not a cause of felicity unless it is confirmed by the revealed Law. And just as we believe these attributes of God Most High, so we believe that He must of necessity be free of their opposites.

The Sending of the Messengers

And we are obliged to believe that He, Most High, sent messengers to creation as bearers of good tidings and as warners, out of a mercy from Him toward His servants and not as an obligation upon Him; and that He chose out prophets by revelation to them as He willed. Prophecy and messengership are among those things with which God singles out whom He wills by sheer bounty; acquisition has no part in them by any route whatever; and whoever claimed that prophecy is acquired has gone astray, as some of the Muʻtazilah maintained. And the prophets and messengers have attributes that must of necessity belong to them, attributes which the intellect does not permit to be denied of them — else they would not be messengers from God nor prophets — and they are: truthfulness; trustworthiness; sagacity; freedom from what repels; the delivery of what they were commanded to deliver to those to whom they were sent; and inerrancy (ʻiṣmah)

— Notes —

[27] (1) The truth is that the intellect does prove the establishment of hearing, sight and speech for the Creator — contrary to the majority of the theologians. We have set this out in the commentary and elsewhere among the investigations of al-Manār.