The Almighty is Endless regarding His essence, perpetuity, eternity, Attributes, qualities and
blessings. His creation, on the other hand, are described as reaching the end of their life terms,
being limited in their characteristics, thoughts, and spheres. The one who is incapacitated
cannot reach the Endless One. No wonder, then, that the minds are forever overcome by the
lights of His Independence, and the reasons are too feeble to realize the brightness of His
Greatness. He is as He describes Himself when He says in 6:18 and 6:61, "He is the Supreme
above His servants."
The Creator is the One Who is adored, and He is worthy of it; hence, He is called ilah. He has
made it clear for us that He is the One who bestows His blessings upon those whom He
creates in sundry ways. Adoring is the ultimate form of glorifying. Reason testifies that the
ultimate end of glorification suits only the One Who is the source of benevolence and bliss. It
is to this fact that the Almighty refers when He says, "How do you deny Allah while you were
dead and He gave you Life"? (2:28).
Nobody knows Allah as He deserves to be known except Allah Himself. In sermon 186 in
Nahjul Balagha, Imam `Ali says the following:
One who assigns conditions to Him does not believe in His Oneness, nor does one who likens
Him to anything grasp the reality about Him. One who illustrates an example for Him does
not revere Him. One who points at Him and imagines Him does not know the meaning of His
Lordship. Anything known by itself is a created thing, and everything that exists by virtue of
other things is the effect thereof. He does things but not with the help of instruments. He
assigns measures but not with the faculty of thinking. He is rich but not by acquisition. Time
does not keep company with Him, nor does He seek help from any means. His Being
precedes time. His Existence precedes non-existence, and His eternity precedes beginning. By
creating the senses, it is known that He does not have the same. By comparing antitheses, it is
known that He has no antithesis, and by striking similarities between things, it is known that
there is nothing similar to Him. He has made light the contrary of darkness, brightness the
opposite of dimness, dryness the opposite of moisture, and heat the opposite of coolness. He
causes harmony among opposites. He fuses together diverse things; He brings closer what is
remote and distances what is joined together. He is not confined to limits, nor computed by
figures. Matters are attracted to one another, and parts point out to what is similar to them; the
word "since" disproves their eternity, and possibility disproves their perpetuity, while certain
means keep them distant from perfection. Through them does the Creator manifest Himself to
the intellect, and by them is He veiled from vision. Stillness and motion do not apply to Him;
how can anything that He causes to have any effect on Him, and how can anything which He
has created revert in its effect unto Him? Or how can anything have an impact upon Him
while He Himself brought it to being? Had it not been so, He would have become subject to
diversity, His Being would have become divisible (into parts), and His reality would have
been prevented from being Eternal. Had He had a front, He would have had a rear! He would
have needed to be completed had there been any shortage in Him. In that case, characteristics