And that is because anyone who conceives certain notions on the basis of his own reasoning can always clothe them in words that bear a measure of relevance to those notions. The very same words are found in the speech of the prophets, peace be upon them, but with entirely different meanings. Such a person then takes those words as pointers to his private concepts and proceeds to claim that the prophets and the heavenly scriptures intended exactly what he has in mind. This is precisely what every group of heretics has done with every divine book, just as the Christians did, and just as the atheists who followed the Greek philosophers did. Those philosophers asserted that the celestial spheres are eternal, without beginning or end; that Allah never spoke the Torah or any other revealed book; that He has no knowledge of particulars—neither of Moses son of ʿImrān nor of anyone else; that He cannot act by will; and that He will not resurrect mankind from their graves.

They said: “Terms such as ‘created,’ ‘originated,’ ‘acted,’ ‘fashioned,’ and the like may refer either to ontic origination or to temporal origination.”

The first, they claim, is the necessary effect produced by a cause that is concomitant with it in time;

the second is the bringing of a thing into existence after it had not been.

Then they went on to say: “We affirm that Allah created the heavens, the earth, and all that lies between them; that He originated, innovated, and fashioned them, just as the prophets, peace be upon them, have reported. Yet what those reports really mean,” they insist, “is ontic origination—that these things are His effects that have always existed alongside Him.”

So it is said to them: None of the prophets—upon them be blessings and peace—ever employed