Page 30 - Demo

26This reasoning would lead us to conclude that each act of God displays a divine emanation as His manifestation and particular attribute, but it is not His Essence or Being. God is Creator, because He created in the beginning of time, and always creates. God spoke in the beginning of time just as He speaks in His own way always. However, as His creation is not eternal or a divine person, so His Word cannot be considered eternal and a divine Person. The Christians proceed further, and make the Creator a divine father and His Word a divine son; and also, because He breathed life into His creatures, He is surnamed a divine Spirit, forgetting that logically He could not be father before creation, nor “son” before He spoke, and neither “Holy Ghost” before He gave life. I can conceive the attributes of God through His works at manifestations a posteriori, but of his eternal and a prior attributes, I no conception whatever, nor do I imagine any human intelligence to be able to comprehend the nature of an eternal attribute and its relationship to the essence of God. In fact, God has not revealed to us the nature of His Being in the Holy Scriptures nor in the human intellect.TheattributesofGodarenottobeconsideredasdistinct and separate divine entities or personalities, otherwise we shall have, not one trinity of persons in the Godhead, but several dozen of trinities. An attribute until it actually emanates from its subject has no existence. We cannot qualify the subject by a particular attribute before that attribute has actually proceeded from it and isseen. Hence we say “God is Good’when we enjoy His good and kind action; but we cannot describe Him -properly speakingas “God is Goodness,” because goodness is not God, but His action and work. It is for this reason that the Qur-án always attributestoAllah the adjectival appellations,such as the Wise, the Knowing, the Merciful, but never with such descriptions as “God islove, knowledge, word,” and