—making (1) that very speech, which you insist is one, something that both descends and does not descend: it descends insofar as it is a command, yet it does not descend insofar as it is a report.

Furthermore, they have matched the Christians in corrupting the sense of the terms “word” and “speech.” The Messiah was called the Word of Allah because Allah created him by His word, “Be—and he is,” just as the objects related to the divine attributes are named after those attributes: what is subject to power is called “power,” what is known is called “knowledge,” what mercy extends to is called “mercy,” and what is commanded is called “command.” We have treated this at length in another place (2).

Yet at times they regard this “word” as an attribute of Allah, declaring it to be knowledge; at other times they regard it as a self-subsisting substance, the very substance that, so they claim, united with the Messiah. In doing so they have distorted the meaning of “speech,” alleging that it is nothing but a sheer meaning, and that this meaning is neither knowledge nor will nor anything akin to them. Rather, they say, it is one thing that nevertheless comprises diverse realities.

Among the Muslims, however, no one says that speech is a self-subsisting substance—except for what is reported from al-Nazzam (3), who said: “Speech, inasmuch as it is sound, is a body among bodies.”

Again, in their view of the Quranic wording—which is (4) letters (5) and which contains meaning—they display a striking parallel to the Christians’ doctrine concerning the body of the Messiah, which they see as a garment of divinity. For these people unanimously hold that the letters of the Quran are not part of Allah’s speech but are created, just as the Christians unanimously hold that the body of the Messiah was not