attributes are dependent on the essence, will is conditional upon knowledge, and knowledge is conditional upon life.

They claimed that the precedence of letters belongs to this category. This is called precedence by nature: the precedence of a condition over what depends upon it, like the precedence of one over two, or of a component over the composite whole. Such an ordering does not entail that the second is nonexistent when the first exists.

If their position is false, then the claim that knowledge is identical with life, life with will, the meaning of the Quran with the meaning of the Torah, and the meaning of the Verse of the Throne and “Say: He is Allah, One” with the meaning of the verse concerning debt and “May the hands of Abū Lahab perish” is also false—whether equally false, less obviously false, or more obviously false.

It may then be said:

Suppose that the Sālimiyyah’s and Karrāmiyyah’s claim that letters exist simultaneously is impossible. The Kullābiyyah’s position is also impossible; the falsity of the former does not entail the truth of the latter.

The position of the Mu‘tazilah and the philosophers is more untenable than all of these.

The truth would therefore lie in the other position: that He has always spoken with letters that follow one another in succession, rather than exist simultaneously.

This entails that temporally originated events subsist in Him. Against anyone who holds this view, the Karrāmiyyah’s inconsistency would not constitute an argument, nor would the falsity of their position entail the falsity of this principle. If, however, letters can exist simultaneously, the very basis of the objection is invalid.