What they affirm for the Prophets can in fact be granted to a righteous, learned man, and the dialogues and unveilings they ascribe to the Prophets occur to many ordinary people of piety. The matters of truth that they do acknowledge are indeed true, yet their unbelief lies in denying the rest of that truth.

Thus we say: the qualities they have attributed to the Prophets—special distinctions in knowledge, power, hearing, and sight by which they excel others—are real. However, their claim that the Prophets’ prerogatives end with what they have enumerated is false. We do not deny that God, Exalted is He, singles out His Prophets with a sacred faculty through which they know what others do not know. Nor do we deny what God presents to them—whether in waking life or in dreams—of faithful matters that accord with reality. Likewise, we do not deny that God may place within souls forces by which effects come about in the world.

On this last point people hold two views. The early Muslims, the jurists, and the great majority maintain that God has placed within created things inherent powers and natures through which effects occur, just as He placed the property of heating in fire, the property of cooling in water, and the like. A group of speculative theologians reject all of this, contending that there are no such powers or natures in things that serve as causes of effects; rather, God merely creates the effects in their presence, not through them. They even say that the eye possesses no intrinsic power