252 – He was therefore asked, “If they are not unanimous that any one of them has reached the highest level, how have you classified him as a scholar?”

253 – He replied, “They do at least concur that he possesses knowledge.”

254 – I said, “True—and they also concur that those speculative theologians whom you refuse to count among the scholars likewise possess knowledge. Why, then, have you advanced these men while ignoring most of those theologians?”

255 – “Your very label and method are nothing but a path of fragmentation, yet on top of that you claim consensus!”

256 – “Indeed, your assertion of consensus involves considerations that, according to the foundations of your own school, should compel you to abandon the claim of consensus in matters reserved for specialists.”

257 – He asked, “So is there any consensus at all?”

258 – I answered, “Yes—praise be to Allah abundantly—in the body of obligatory duties whose ignorance no one is excused. This is the sort of consensus such that, were you to say, ‘All people are agreed upon it,’ you would not find a single knowledgeable person around you who would dispute the claim.”

259 – “This, then, is the proper domain in which one who claims consensus is truthful: in these matters and in certain fundamental principles of knowledge, not in its subsidiary issues, nor in other fundamentals beyond them.”

260 – “As for the consensus you allege in areas where you have yourself witnessed division in your own time—and similar reports are transmitted from every generation—consider it: can that possibly be called consensus?”

261 – He said, “Some of your own companions have asserted consensus regarding the very issues for which I claim it, yet every time I have heard their statement mentioned, it was only to censure it—and in my view it is indeed blameworthy.”

262 – I replied, “On what basis did you, and they, censure him? For claiming consensus within a single faction is…"