The Divine Attributes: Vision, Hearing, Knowledge

Al-Radd ala al-Jahmiyyah defends the reality of the divine attributes against Jahmite allegorical interpretation by returning repeatedly to the Quranic text and to the transmitted understanding of the early Muslim community. The Jahmiyyah, committed to denying real attributes to Allah in the name of absolute divine transcendence, subjected Quranic descriptions of Allah's sight, hearing, and knowledge to radical reinterpretation. When the Quran says Allah is 'the Hearing, the Seeing' (42:11), the Jahmites would argue that these names refer to relational properties or to created intermediaries rather than to real attributes of the divine essence. Ahmad regards this interpretive move as a violation of the plain meaning of the Quran and a departure from the understanding of the Companions.

Ahmad demonstrates from the Quran that Allah describes Himself as knowing things with complete comprehensiveness: 'He knows what is in the heavens and the earth, and He knows what you conceal and what you reveal. Allah knows what is in the breasts' (64:4). For the Jahmites, this knowledge cannot be an attribute because that would imply a real quality in the divine nature. Ahmad argues that this conclusion contradicts the very purpose of Quranic self-description. Allah reveals Himself to His servants through the names and attributes He uses of Himself. If these names and attributes do not convey real information about the divine nature, then revelation has failed in its central communicative purpose and the believer is left with no positive knowledge of the One they are commanded to love, fear, and worship.

The attribute of sight (basar) and hearing (sam') receive particular attention because of their connection to the doctrine of the beatific vision discussed in the following chapter. Ahmad argues that Allah's own sight and hearing are real attributes, and this grounds his case that the believers will genuinely see Allah in Paradise. If Allah has no real attribute of sight, then the vision He offers to His servants in Paradise becomes conceptually incoherent. The coherence of the eschatological promises depends, in Ahmad's view, on the reality of the divine attributes that give those promises their content.

Ahmad also addresses the attribute of Knowledge in its relationship to divine decree. The Qadariyyah denied that Allah had foreknowledge of human acts before they occurred, and the Jahmiyyah, through their general denial of attributes, provided an unwitting theological cover for this denial. Ahmad insists that Allah's knowledge is complete, comprehensive, eternal, and real. He knew before creating the universe everything that would occur within it, including every act of every creature. This knowledge does not compel human actions but rather encompasses them within the divine awareness. The difference between knowing what someone will do and causing them to do it is real and important, and Ahmad's defense of divine knowledge without Jabriyyah compulsion reflects the careful balance that Sunni theology sought to maintain.