Fifty-sixth Point:

We say: Your claim that it is impossible for two sounds to come together in a single locus—a claim you have sought to prove by what is both observable and unobservable—is unfounded. It is well known that, in your view, the oneness of the Creator bears no resemblance (1) to the oneness of anything else; nor, according to you, is it of the same nature (2) as the oneness that belongs to physical bodies. Indeed, within the sensible realm you acknowledge that nothing is absolutely one in every respect except the indivisible atom, for those who affirm its existence (3). Yet after all this you still maintain that the simultaneous presence of two distinct sounds in one locus at the same moment is impossible, just as the concurrence of two colours is impossible, even though the only sensible entity to which such a conjunction could conceivably apply is a body (4)—and that would necessarily imply that the body itself is one.

We therefore reply: Granted that a body cannot accommodate two different sounds, just as it cannot contain a single meaning that is simultaneously a command, a prohibition, an informative statement, and a question, why did you not likewise assert that an entity which is one yet not a body could admit multiple sounds, just as you say that within it subsists one meaning comprising diverse realities?

Then, when you were asked, “How can this be rationally conceived?” you answered: “It is conceived by means of the very proof that establishes its pre-eternity (5) and precludes it from being composite or diverse, just as one conceives of a Speaker who is a single entity without parts.”

Yet it is manifest that, upon close examination, the evidences you present for the pre-eternity of speech make no distinction (6) between meanings and letters; the distinction you draw is merely an expedient introduced to exclude letters from that ruling.