and will, and have challenged them over treating one and the same meaning as both a command and a statement—so much so that some have had to interpret all speech as statements, with a statement relating to what is reported as knowledge relates to what is known, and may even be compelled to explain statements as knowledge because there is no distinction between them—these are implications of their doctrine which, if they necessarily follow, may be used to demonstrate its falsity. Yet not everyone who holds a view accepts its implications.
People hold three views concerning speech:
Does the term denote both wording and meaning together, as the majority hold? Or does it denote wording alone, provided that it conveys meaning, as the Muʿtazilah and many others hold? Or does it denote the meaning conveyed by the wording, as the Kullābīs hold? Some of their later adherents have treated it as a term applied to both with distinct meanings.
There are likewise three views concerning the speaker:
The first is that a speaker is one who produces speech, even in another, as the Muʿtazilah hold.
The second is that a speaker is one in whom speech subsists, even if he does not produce it and it is neither within his power nor subject to his will, as the Kullābīs hold.
The third is that a speaker combines both descriptions: speech subsists in him, and he has power over it.
There is no doubt that the vast majority of peoples say that no one can be a speaker unless speech subsists in him, just as no one can be moving unless motion subsists in him, or knowing unless knowledge subsists in him, and so forth.
But the Kullābīs believed that temporally originated things cannot subsist in Him. For this reason, they considered it impossible for speech to be within His power and subject to His will. They said: “For whatever is subject to power and will is temporally originated and cannot be an inseparable attribute of His.”
You yourself have demonstrated the falsity of this principle. On your own premises, therefore, you were bound to allow that such things could subsist in Him, for you have no evidence for denying this except what you use to deny all the other