Thus, it is clear that this analogy for revelation’s opposition to reason provides no grounds whatsoever for giving precedence to the opinions of rational thinkers over revelation.

Furthermore, even if we grant that this is analogous to a conflict between revelation and reason, we may say:

It is well known that when a judge hears the person whose uprightness has been attested to impugn those who vouched for him and accuse them of lying in some of what they reported, this does not require giving precedence to their statements. They may have been truthful in attesting to his uprightness but untruthful in the matter in which he accused them of lying. They may have been untruthful both in attesting to his uprightness and in this matter, or untruthful in attesting to his uprightness but truthful in this matter, whether they were deliberately lying or were mistaken. In such a case, the judge withholds judgment until the matter becomes clear to him; he does not reject the statements of those who attested to the person’s uprightness merely because that person contradicts them. If this were analogous to a conflict between reason and revelation, it would entail giving precedence to reason.

[The Seventh Argument]

We may say:

Giving precedence to what is known through reason over scriptural proofs is impossible and self-contradictory, whereas giving precedence to scriptural proofs is possible and consistent. The latter must therefore be adopted, not the former. This is because a thing’s being known or not known through reason is not an inherent attribute of that thing. Rather, it is relative and relational: Zayd may know through his reason what Bakr does not know through his reason, and a person may know something through reason at one time while being ignorant of it at another.

All the questions in which reason and revelation are said to conflict are matters about which rational thinkers have differed. They have not agreed that reason requires a particular conclusion; rather, each rational thinker