—not from anything that had previously existed in Mary’s womb, not from any seminal seed of hers, nor from anything else whatsoever, but solely from the subsistence of the creative Word, one of the three hypostases of the divine Trinity. Once that subsistence was joined to the human nature it had fashioned for itself, it became, among human beings, a distinct and recognized entity. It fused with the very substance of humanity, so that—by virtue of that single, unified subsistence—it became the subsistence of Allah’s creative Word: one within the Trinity in the essence of His divinity, and one among humankind in the essence of His humanity. Thus He is not two, but one with the Father and the Spirit—He Himself is also one with all people through two differing essences: the uncreated essence of the divine nature and the created essence of the human nature. Through the unity of this single subsistence—the subsistence of the Word who is the Son begotten of Allah before all ages—He is the very one born of the Virgin Mary at the end of time, without ever being separated from the Father or from the Holy Spirit.

I say: This is the statement of Saʿīd ibn al-Biṭrīq with which he sought to establish the creed of the Christians. The falsehood it contains is so extensive that a full exposition would be long; nevertheless, we shall cite several points.

First Point: He said, “Among Allah’s majestic acts of governance is that He dispatched His creative Word—by which everything was brought into being—from His own essence. It is not created but begotten of Him. The creative Word of Allah then descended with its abiding, everlasting subsistence and took flesh from the Virgin Mary.”

It may be replied: You have declared the Word to be creative, and then you said, after that, “the Word was not cut off from Him, nor from His creative Spirit,” and then you said after that: