For our part, we likewise affirm that He has always possessed the power to act, even though we all agree that an act actually occurring from pre-eternity is impossible.

Hence we have four—indeed, five—factions who say that the Qur’an is uncreated; the other faction are the “creationists.”

As for the philosophers who claim the world to be eternal, together with the atheistic theologians and mystics who sided with them, they hold that God has no speech distinct from the souls of the prophets and others; rather, His speech is something He brings into being within those souls.

What is astonishing is that they fled from affirming the pre-eternity of His attributes yet declared His act—something external to Him—eternal and inseparable from Him. Plain reason, however, shows that affirming the pre-eternity of attributes is far more intelligible than affirming the pre-eternity of effects. If they concede that an effect of His, distinct from Him, can nonetheless be a perpetual concomitant of His essence—so that the Necessary Being is inseparably linked to bodies outside Himself—why should it be inconceivable for Him to be inseparably linked to His timeless attributes?

One may say to them: According to you, it is not impossible for temporal events to inhere in an eternal entity, for the celestial sphere, in your view, is eternal and yet the locus of events. Nor do you find the eternity of bodies inconceivable, since the sphere is a body that you deem eternal. Likewise, you allow for an eternal thing to be coupled with its eternal attribute, for the sphere, as you claim, is eternal along with its inherent attribute. Why, then, do you deny that the One who is eternal and necessarily existent in Himself is characterized by these attributes?

If you object, “The inherence of attributes entails composition, and the Necessary Being cannot be composite,”