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Once prophethood and messengership are established, so too is His attribute of speaking and addressing others.

The essence of messengership is to convey the sender’s speech. If there is no speech, what do the messengers convey? Indeed, how can anyone conceivably be a messenger? Hence, more than one of the early generations said:

“Whoever denies that Allah speaks, or that the Quran is His speech, has denied the messengership of Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him—indeed, the messengership of all the messengers, whose essence is to convey the speech of Allah, blessed and exalted be He.”

Thus, those who denied his messengership said of the Quran:

“This is nothing but magic handed down; this is nothing but the word of a human being.” 74:24, 25

They meant the audible Quran that was conveyed to them and with which they were warned. Whoever says that Allah did not speak it has made a statement resembling theirs. Exalted is Allah, far above what the wrongdoers say.

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Explaining how it contains a refutation of those who maintain the eternity of the world

This is demonstrated in several ways:

First: affirming His praise necessarily entails affirming His acts, especially since most, if not all, of the grounds for praise in the Quran concern His acts. The same applies here: He praised Himself for His lordship, which encompasses His acts performed by choice. It is impossible for an act to be coeval with its agent. Every sound intellect and upright natural disposition rejects this. An act necessarily comes after its agent.

Moreover, an act is the object of will, causal efficacy, and power, and their object cannot possibly be eternal.

Second: affirming His lordship over all worlds. This is established by what we have already mentioned. The world is everything that