—constitute a third opinion that violates the consensus.

It may be answered: Not everyone who affirms that He is described by the meanings of command, prohibition, and report—and that these meanings subsist in Him—holds that they are eternal. Many of those who make this affirmation do not deem them eternal: among the scholastic theologians are sects such as the Shīʿa, the Karrāmiyya, and others; and among the ḥadith scholars and jurists are numerous groups. This is well known in the works of ḥadith and kalām.

Nor may he contend, “These people say that letters subsist in Him and are not eternal, yet they do not say that non-eternal meanings subsist in Him,” for the statements transmitted from them clearly assert both propositions.

Second: None of the Salaf or the leading imams ever said that the Quran is eternal and detached from His will and power. They unanimously agreed only that the Quran is Allah’s speech and is uncreated, while “created” in their usage refers to whatever Allah brings into existence of entities and the attributes inhering in them.

Those who did declare it created said that He created it within a body, as has been reported from them. The Salaf replied that this would entail that Allah is not the Speaker and that the speech belongs to that created body, so that the tree would have been the one that said to Moses:

“Indeed, I—only I—am Allah; there is no deity but Me, so worship Me.” (1)

For this reason they explicitly declared mistaken (2) anyone who said it was created, because, in their view, it is known by innate disposition, by revelation, by reason, and by language that the speaker is the one in whom the speech subsists. Some even said that He was not a speaker until He created the speech, thereby becoming a speaker after having been incapable of speech.

These people fancied that the Salaf, by their statement “The Quran is Allah’s speech and uncreated,” meant that it is a single eternal meaning—just as certain Muʿtazila and Rāfiḍa imagined that what the Salaf intended was merely that it is not fabricated or false, as he himself has mentioned in