Ibn Qudamah
In theological creed, Ibn Qudamah was one of the primary proponents of the Athari school of Sunni theology, which held that overt theological speculation was spiritually detrimental and supported drawing theology exclusively from the two sources of the Quran and the hadith. Regarding theology, Ibn Qudamah famously said: "We have no need to know the meaning of what God—Exalted is He—intended by His attributes—He is Great and Almighty. No deed is intended by them. No obligation is linked to them except belief in them. Belief in them is possible without knowing their meaning." According to one scholar, it is evident that Ibn Qudamah "completely opposed discussion of theological matters and permitted no more than repeating what was said about God in the data of revelation." In other words, Ibn Qudamah rejected "any attempt to link God’s attributes to the referential world of ordinary human language," which has led some scholars to describe Ibn Qudamah's theology as "unreflective traditionalism," that is to say, as a theological point of view which purposefully avoided any type of speculation or reflection upon the nature of God. Ibn Qudamah's attitude towards theology was challenged by certain later Hanbali thinkers like Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), who broke with this type of "unreflective traditionalism" in order to engage "in [bold and unprecedented] interpretation[s] of the meanings of God’s attributes."