could likewise be reduced to a single letter, and they further argued that ordering is of two kinds (1): intrinsic ordering and existential ordering (2). The first is exemplified by the ordering of knowledge in relation to life, or of an effect in relation to its complete cause.

Those who explain their claim that it is “uncreated” by saying that it is not connected to His will and power—whether they hold it to be a meaning, letters, or both letter and meaning (3)—state the following: the created is the originated, namely whatever Allah, exalted is He, brings into existence separate from Himself. Nothing exists (4) except what is eternal or what is created. Whatever is eternal (5) is inseparable from the Essence of Allah Most High, is not contingent upon His will and power, and is not one of His acts. Whatever is originated is the created entity that stands apart from Allah, exalted is He, and it alone is subject to His will and power. In their view, no act, speech, will, or anything else dependent on His will and power subsists in the Divine Essence (6).

They maintain that contingencies cannot inhere in His being; motion, a newly-occurring act, or anything similar is impossible for Him. Consequently, they allegorically interpret every passage of the Qur’an and Sunnah that conflicts with this stance—and such passages are exceedingly numerous—such as His words, “Then He rose over the Throne” (7) and “Then He turned toward the heaven” (8); and His self-descriptions of coming, approaching, and descending, of His anger on the Day of Resurrection, of His pleasure with the inhabitants of Paradise, of His speaking to Moses and to His servants on the Day of Resurrection (9), and of His speaking by way of revelation when He speaks it and the angels hear it.