This, then, is their second analogy for God: they likened the Messiah—or God together with the human being—to the soul in relation to the body, and to fire in relation to iron. This analogy is even more corrupt and its falsity is still more obvious.

As for the third analogy—namely, their likening of the matter to the sun in relation to water and clay—it is yet more unsound. They have said, as cited earlier:

“The case of the sun that mingles with water, clay, every damp substance and mire is such that it never changes, nor is it ever transmuted so as to lose its light, its permanence, or its radiance, even while it suffuses every darkness, filth, stench, and impurity.”

We reply: The very body of the sun that is in the sky has never mixed with water or clay; it has neither united with them nor indwelt them in any fashion whatsoever. Indeed, the distance between the two is so vast that only Allah can truly gauge it—and Allah, exalted is He, is far more sublime, majestic, and remote from mingling with human beings than the sun is from water and clay.

If, then, the sun itself neither unites with, mixes with, nor indwells water and clay—indeed, no created thing at all—then the Lord of all realms is even more deserving of being declared transcendent above any union, intermixture, or indwelling within His creatures.

It is only the sun’s ray that pervades the water, the clay, the air, and whatever else can receive it, just as the light of fire penetrates the earth and the walls. Yet the very substance of the fire itself, standing independently in the lamp’s wick, is a self-subsistent entity and never enters any of those places.