[46] And as was reported in the Book of Al-Asous 1 , the Scholar—His might was mighty—said in response to a questioner: “If Allah were commingled with things, He would be similar to them; and if He were distinct, He would be an antithesis to them; and if He were neither commingled nor distinct, He would be nonexistence. However, I say that He is distinct from them in His essence (jawharihi), yet not distinct from them as an antithesis; and I say that He is outside of them, yet I do not mean that He is not within them; rather, I mean that His essence is separate from their essence even if He is within them.
And I do not say that their essence is mixed with His essence, because they are originated (muhdathah) while He is eternal (qadim), and they are created while He is the Creator.”
The interpretation of that—and the discourse belongs to Hamzah bin Ali bin Shu'bah al-Harrani, may Allah sanctify him, in his book Hujjat al-'Arif—is his saying: "If Allah were commingled with things, He would be similar to them," whereby he negated from Him any similarity to things. And his saying: "and if He were distinct, He would be an antithesis to them," he intended by it to affirm manifestation without sharing a common genus with them in their origination; and that if He were distinct from them in manifestation, He would be their antithesis, whereas it is impermissible for anything to be His antithesis.