I said: These are the quotations of the scholastic theologians, each citing the other, showing that they treat the attribute as identical with the One described, whether that be the Creator or a created being; thus it suits their view to say that speech itself is the speaker.

As for the People of the Sunnah and affirmation, the report ascribed to them has been demonstrated to be false. Regarding the unqualified claim that an attribute is a part of the subject, or that it is not something other than it, many groups among the leading authorities and champions of kalām have indeed used such language. Yet when the matter is carefully examined, one will find (1) that a sound-minded person (2) sees nothing in it that contradicts the self-evident dictates of reason, unless some ulterior purpose is at play. In fact, many of these controversies are merely verbal or conceptual. Thus, whoever says, “Accidents are part of the body, or they are not other than it,” and whoever says, “They are other than it,” will, when the issue is probed by their own specialists, discover that the disagreement comes down to wording and conceptual perspective (3), and to differing conventions about what is meant by “part” and “other.”

We have already clarified this in Bayān Talbīs al-Jahmiyyah concerning the foundations of their innovative kalām doctrines (4)—a work also called Takhliṣ al-Talbīs min Kitāb al-Taʾsīs, which Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Rāzī wrote to deny the scriptural attributes—[and he based that denial] (5) on the claim that affirming those attributes would entail the Lord—exalted is He—being dependent on something else and composed of parts. We have shown how that argument is saturated with equivocal, ambiguous terms.

Thus, if someone were to use the word “part” for the Essence or for any of the other attributes and say, “It is a part of Allah,” and another were to censure him on the grounds that an attribute is not (6)