ḥayā yaḥyā ḥayātan—“he lived, he lives, life”—yet one never says “ḥayā such-and-such” or “ḥayā by such-and-such.” Instead, one says aḥyā kadhā, “he gave life to so-and-so.” Bringing to life is an action distinct from merely being alive, just as teaching is other than knowledge, empowering other than power, and addressing (taklīm) other than intrinsic speech (takallum).

Yet you have made this Holy Spirit a voice that speaks through the prophets—peace be upon them—whereas the life of Allah is an attribute inherent in Him; it does not reside in anyone else. The Holy Spirit that is found in the prophets and the righteous, therefore, is not the life of Allah that abides in Him. Had that Holy Spirit which is in the prophets been one of the three hypostases, every prophet would have been a deity worthy of worship, his nāsūt (human nature) having fused with lāhūt (divine nature) just as you claim for the Messiah. For when one of the hypostases united with him, he became both humanity and divinity. Accordingly, if the Holy Spirit—one of the three hypostases—truly spoke through the prophets, each of them would contain both divinity and humanity exactly like the Messiah; yet you acknowledge indwelling and union only for the Messiah, even though you attribute to others what you affirm for him.

At other times they liken the two hypostases—knowledge and life, which they name the Word and the Holy Spirit—to the light and heat that belong to the sun together with the sun, and compare them to the life and speech that belong to the soul together with the soul. This analogy is unsound. If by “light” and “heat” they mean qualities inherent in the very essence of the sun, then those are attributes of the sun that subsist within it; they do not reside in anything else nor unite with anything else—just as the attribute of the soul is likewise. (That is, if one even concedes that heat actually inheres in the sun; otherwise, the claim is inadmissible.)