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The essential point may be summarized as follows: the messengers either knew the descriptive and prescriptive truths or did not know them. If they knew them, they either could or could not explain them through speech and writing. If they could explain them, their explanation could be accessible either to ordinary people and the elite alike, or to the elite alone.

If someone says that they did not know these truths, and that the philosophers and speculative theologians knew them better and explained them more effectively, then this is undoubtedly the position of hypocritical heretics. We shall address them later. The purpose of the present discussion, then, is to show that this is the position of heretics, and that only a hypocrite or an ignorant person would maintain it.

If, on the other hand, he says:

The messengers’ purpose is to set humanity at large aright. People in general cannot understand these inner truths, so the messengers addressed them through parables so that they might benefit, presenting rational truths in sensory forms.

Their discourse concerning Allah and the Last Day thus included imaginative representations and depictions of intelligible realities in perceptible forms, through which people in general could benefit in matters of faith in Allah and the Hereafter. This instils in their souls a sense of Allah’s greatness and the momentousness of the Last Day, prompting them to worship Allah and to hope and fear; thus they benefit