except God. None fears Him but the knower, and none knows more than God, so none fears God but God. Yet the forms differ because the relations differ, or the relations differ because the forms differ.
Were it not for relations, forms would not originate, and were it not for forms, the differences of relations would not be known. Existence is bound together, part to part: its tying is its very untying. Then, in this invocation, ‘God is Invincible, Forgiving’ [Fatir 35:28].
(Invincibility and the Concealment of the Totality of Knowledge)
His invincibility is His being inaccessible, exalted is He, to the ruling that the divine Names have when they regard one another, as parts of the world regard one another, thereby becoming qualified by fear, hope, aversion, and love. God is invincibly beyond such things, for He is the one feared, hoped for, asked, and who answers if He wills, and if He wills[85].
He is Forgiving through what He has concealed of these sciences and secrets pertaining to Him, exalted is He, to His Names, and to the world, from all creation as a totality. Not one created being knows the totality, though it has knowledge of individual parts: one possesses what another does not. Thus, as a whole, it is attained and not attained; it is attained in the aggregate, not attained by each individual.
This is His saying, ‘They encompass nothing of His knowledge except what He wills’ [al-Baqara 2:255]. He used the partitive ba’. One possesses knowledge of God that another does not; for this reason He said, ‘God is Invincible, Forgiving’ [Fatir 35:28].
Notes
[85]
(‘If He wills’ is repeated here in the source with no completion after the second occurrence; the phrase has been preserved without supplying a continuation.)
