Nor did any of the predecessors ever say that Allah speaks without His power and will, or that His speech is one single meaning subsisting in His Essence, or that He uttered the Quran, the Torah, or the Gospel in pre-eternity with letters and sounds that themselves are eternal.

Later, however, a group appeared and proclaimed, “It is eternal.”

Among them were those who said, “What is eternal is a single meaning inherent in the Essence, the reality underlying all of Allah’s speech. If that meaning is expressed in Hebrew, it is the Torah; if expressed in Syriac, it is the Gospel; and if expressed in Arabic, it is the Quran. Command, prohibition, and narrative are merely attributes of this single meaning, not distinct genres.”

Others asserted, “Rather, it is eternal in the form of letters—or of letters and sounds—that have no beginning, and these very letters and sounds are the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran.”

The scholars responded to such claims: “By declaring it to be eternal you have opposed both revelation and reason, and you have introduced an innovation to which none of the Companions, their followers, or the imams of the Muslims ever gave precedent. You have fled one dilemma only to fall into another, like someone seeking refuge from scorching heat only to leap into the fire.”

Your further claim that it is a single meaning—one and the same referent for all verbal expressions—is a stubborn rejection of both intellect and scripture, for we know with absolute certainty that the meaning of the verse