is possible to believe the messengers without resorting to the method based on the temporal origination of accidents and the composition of bodies.

Yet these scholars and others consider that method sound, even though they say that believing the messengers does not depend upon it. Some of them maintain that it does not conflict with the scriptural texts and that the two can be reconciled.

[The Fifth Argument]

This is the approach of al-Ashʿarī and the leading Companions: they affirm the attributes conveyed in the Quran while considering sound the method of argument based on the temporal origination of accidents and the composition of bodies.

This is also the approach of Abū Hātim ibn Hibbān al-Bustī, Abū Sulaymān al-Khattābī, and the Tamīmīs, such as Abū al-Hasan al-Tamīmī and others of his household; likewise, Abū ʿAlī ibn Abī Mūsā, Judge Abū Yaʿlā, Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, Ibn al-Zāghūnī, and very many Muslims from the Hanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī, and Hanbalī schools.

Some of these scholars, such as al-Rāzī and others like him, claim that the two conflict. The same claim is made by those who regard reasoning through the temporal origination of accidents as obligatory, such as the Muʿtazilah, Abū al-Maʿālī, and his followers.

They all agree that this rational method, as they understand it, contradicts what is understood from the Quranic verses and hadiths—whether they maintain that believing the Messenger depends upon it, as some of the Muʿtazilah and the followers of the author of al-Irshād maintain, or do not maintain this, as is the case with those who agree with al-Ashʿarī and al-Rāzī.

The majority of Muslims hold