“The Quran is created.” It was because of this method that the Jahmiyyah maintained that Paradise and Hell would perish, and that al-ʿAllāf maintained that movement within them would cease. Many practitioners of speculative theology derived further conclusions from it, as has been explained at length elsewhere.

Others responded to them:

As for your claim that this method is the foundation for knowing the religion of Islam and the prophethood of the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, its falsity is among the self-evident truths of Islam. Everyone acquainted with the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, his Companions, and the faith and Quran he brought knows that he never called people through this method. Nor did any of the Companions or those who followed them in righteousness ever speak of it. How, then, can it be the foundation of faith when the one who brought faith and those whose faith was strongest never spoke of it at all, and none of them pursued it?

Those who recognized that this method was an innovation fall into two groups:

One group considered it sound in itself, but held that the early generations turned away from it because its premises were lengthy and obscure, and because those pursuing it risked becoming entangled in doubt and protracted inquiry. This was the position of a number of scholars, including al-Ashʿarī in his Epistle to the Frontier, al-Khattābī, al-Halīmī, al-Qādī Abū Yaʿlā, Ibn ʿAqīl, Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, and others.

The second position is that of those who say: Rather, this method is inherently false, and that is why the early generations condemned it and turned away from it. This was the position of the leading scholars of the early generations, such as Ibn al-Mubārak, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ahmad