and indeed, some of them even imagined that no one’s faith could be valid unless he accepted it, a notion whose falsity is self-evident from the very fundamentals of Islam ⦗1⦘.

The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—took on this unsound argument, exposed its contradiction, and showed that establishing the world’s origination does not depend on the method adopted by those theologians. Rather, it can be demonstrated by other sound rational proofs that are opposed neither by clear reason nor by authentic revelation. He refers to them in several places in this book ⦗2⦘, and a mere allusion to them here will suffice.

Once the root from which the controversy over divine speech branched out has been understood, we must now consider the dispute over the issue itself, in light of what the Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—has set forth in this work.

Objections

The early scholars pressed the deniers who negated the attribute of speech with several binding arguments, among them:

1 – The similarity of their position to that of the Christians. The latter say, “Jesus is the very Word of God,” thereby treating speech—which by nature belongs to the category of accidents—as a self-subsistent substance, and on that basis they deified him. They claim that the godhead—by which they mean the Word—united with the manhood—by which they mean the body of Jesus. Thus, in their view, Jesus is composed of two parts: an eternal, divine part, namely the Word, and a created, temporal part, namely the body; yet the two united and became a single entity, the Messiah. This resembles the assertion of the Kullābiyyah and the Ashʿarīs, who divide the Quran into two halves: the eternal—namely the meaning subsisting in the Divine Self;