The fifth: Are these meanings a single meaning, or five meanings, or many?

All of this, in fact, is subject to dispute. How, then, can one imagine (1) that the ummah’s disagreement on this matter is limited to only two positions, such that later scholars may not introduce a third?

To make this clearer: he first proved that the reality of speech is request, prohibition, and judgment; then he cited those who held this view as evidence that these meanings must be eternal, arguing that since they affirmed both propositions, the one entailed the other. Yet this is precisely an appeal to a “composite consensus”: obliging agreement with them in a question for which proof does exist merely because they also agree with them in another question for which no proof exists (2).

Those very scholars, however, also said: “It is originated and it is not these meanings.” Why, then, should it not be permissible to concur with them when they say it is originated (3), and to concur with the others concerning these meanings? In fact, the distinctive stance of the Ashʿarī school, when built on this premise, is like the stance of the Rāfiḍah who construct their doctrine of ʿAlī’s Imamate—which is the hallmark of their sect—upon a comparable (4) foundation.

It is well known that the distinguishing element of the doctrine of al-Ashʿarī and Ibn Kullāb is their claim that Allah’s speech is a single, eternal meaning subsisting in His Essence; everything else they maintained in the fundamentals had already been anticipated, either by the ḥadīth scholars or by other theologians.

Likewise, the distinctive feature of the Imāmī Rāfiḍah—namely the Twelvers and those similar to them—is their assertion of an infallible imām and their claim that ʿAlī’s imamate was established by explicit designation, followed by the designation of each subsequent imām one after another (5), even though they allege that this has been transmitted by mass narration—