The messengers have told us that Allah created the heavens and the earth and everything between them in six days, then rose over the Throne; that Allah existed and nothing existed before Him; and that His Throne was then upon the water. He then recorded everything in the Record, then created the heavens and the earth.

Neither Allah’s Book, nor His Messenger’s Sunnah, nor the statements of any of the early generations contain this position which he attributes to all adherents of revealed religions. Rather, the imams of Islam explicitly stated that Allah has always spoken whenever He wills, been capable of whatever He wills, and acted, with whatever action He wills subsisting in Him. Indeed, they explicitly stated that He has always been acting, and that a living being must be active, with action subsisting in it.

Some of them used the wording:

“A living being cannot be in motion.”

Others expressed it as follows:

“He has been beneficent from eternity, knowing what has been from eternity, unto eternity.”

Others said:

“He was All-Forgiving, Most Merciful, Almighty, All-Wise, and has always been so.”

Thus, al-Rāzī’s account of the position of the adherents of revealed religions is like Ibn Sīnā’s account of the positions of the philosophers. In this discussion, neither man mentioned the positions of the great leading philosophers of antiquity, nor those of the prophets and messengers and their followers among the Companions and Successors, including the imams of the Muslims and the scholars of religion. Rather, these five positions mentioned by these two men and their followers represent neither group’s position.

Thus, all the positions they discussed, whether defending or discrediting them, are positions whose unsoundness and contradictions are apparent.