is created.’ Whoever considers the meaning conveyed by the wording says: ‘It is uncreated.’ The truth lies in combining the two.”

He said:

“The Ashʿarīs denied that the speaker produces speech because they imagined that, if this principle were conceded, they would have to acknowledge that Allah produces His speech. Since they believed that the speaker is the one in whose essence speech subsists, they thought these two principles would entail that Allah produces speech within His own essence, making His essence a locus for temporally originated events. They therefore said: ‘The speaker does not produce speech. Rather, speech is an eternal attribute of His essence, like knowledge and other attributes.’ This holds true of inner speech, but not of the speech that expresses what is within the soul, namely verbal utterance.

“The Muʿtazilah, believing speech to be what the speaker produces, said: ‘Speech consists solely of verbal utterance.’ Hence they said that verbal utterance is created. In their view, insofar as verbal utterance is an act, it need not subsist in the one who produces it. The Ashʿarīs, however, maintain that it must subsist in the speaker. This is true in the observable world of both kinds of speech: inner speech and the verbal utterance that expresses it. As for the Creator, inner speech subsists in Him, whereas that which expresses it does not subsist in Him, glorified is He.