whereas in their doctrine it is a single name for both the divinity (lāhūt) and the humanity (nāsūt) once the two have merged. Yet that “union,” in their view, is a contingent event; before it took place there was neither a human nature nor anything that could be called “Messiah.” It is therefore evident that David did not intend by “the Word of Allah” the Messiah himself.

At most they can say: he meant the Word that later united with the Messiah. However, the one who, by Allah’s permission, created is the Messiah, exactly as the Quran declares: “He gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him whose name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, distinguished in this world and the Hereafter and among those brought near” ⦗3:45⦘.

Hence the Word that David mentioned—and of which he said that it created the heavens and the earth—is not the Messiah who, by Allah’s permission, fashioned from clay the form of a bird. Their attempt to argue from the former to the latter is therefore baseless. Indeed, that Word by which the heavens and the earth were created had no human nature attached to it at the moment of creation, a fact admitted by all nations, whereas the Messiah necessarily includes a human nature. It is thus clear that “the Word” could not have been meant as a reference to the Messiah.