As He says:

“Then, when he came to it, he was called: ‘O Moses!’”
(Qur’an, Ta Ha 20:11)

Yet, according to them, God has forever been calling him from pre-eternity; what was newly produced was merely Moses’ hearing of that call.

A different group maintained that the very genus of speech came into existence after not having been. They said it either arises in something other than God—thus being created—or arises in His own Essence—thus being originated yet uncreated. In their view, He was not, in pre-eternity, described as “One who speaks,” unless “speaker” is reinterpreted to mean “able to speak.” But to define Him so while also denying speech in pre-eternity is to unite two mutually exclusive claims. Indeed, for them He has eternally been non-speaking, and they deem it impossible for Him to have been speaking from everlasting whenever He willed.

The Salaf and the leading imams, however, said: God has never ceased to be speaking whenever He wills. The distinction between the everlastingness and pre-existence of the genus and the everlastingness and pre-existence of a particular instance lifts the veil from the truth in this matter that has perplexed people of intellect. God guides whom He wills to a straight path.

The philosophers have no proof that contradicts this position. Their reasoning only entails the perpetual activity of the Lord, that the act and its concomitant—namely, the measure of the act called “time”—have no beginning, that the possibility of new events has no beginning, and that the possibility of the Lord’s influence upon them has no beginning. All of this requires only the everlastingness of the genus of action, not the everlastingness of any specific act.

It has already been shown decisively that their claim that the world is eternal because it proceeds from a perfect cause is false, and that from a perfect cause none of its effects can be delayed. The existence of a perfect cause eternally conjoined with its effect is impossible, and what is concomitant with it in time cannot be an act produced by an agent.